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FOUNDED BY JOHN O. ROCKEFELLER 



THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN RECENT 
PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 

A DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY 
OF THE 

GRADUATE DIVINITY SCHOOL 

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF 
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

DEPARTMENT OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 



(at?- 




BY 
HENRY BURKE ROBINS 



KANSAS CITY, MO. 

CHAS. E. BROWN PRINTING CO. 
1912 



^ 

V «> 



Published August, 1912 



Gift 

Tfe© Univeraity 

13 NOV 19/2 



THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 
RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 



CONTENTS 
Bibliography. 

Introduction — Purpose and range of the study. Relation of assur- 
ance of salvation (Heilsgewissheit) to intellectual certainty 
( Wahrheitsgewissheit) . 

I. Preliminary Survey. 

Brief historical survey of the basis of assurance in Christian 
theology. 

A. Before the Reformation. 

1. The Fathers. 

2. The Scholastics. 

3. The standard Catholic view. Thomas Aquinas. 
The Council of Trent. 

B. The Reformation and After: 

Protestantism . 

1. Luther. 

2. Melanchthon. 

3. Calvin. 

4. Pietism and English Evangelicalism. 

5. Schleiermacher. 

C. The Nineteenth Century. 

The Nineteenth Century revolution in world-view. 
Significance of the new view-point for theology. How 
the basis of assurance is involved. 
3 



f THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

II. Present-Day Protestant Types. 

The types to be considered distinguished. Their genealogy. 

A. General Survey of the Doctrinal Systems of 

Each Group. 

1. Conservative Orthodoxy — 

Orr, Warfield. 

2. Ritschlianism — 

Herrmann, Kaftan, Harnack. 

3. Modern Positivism — 

Forsyth, Seeberg, Beth. 

4. The School of Comparative Religions — 

Troeltsch, Bousset. 

B. Fundamental Conceptions. 

1. Theory of knowledge. 

2. View of science and reality. 

3. History. 

4. Revelation. 

C. The Relation of These Conceptions to the Basis 

of Assurance. 



III. Alternative Views. 

A. The supernaturalistic view of the world as determinant 
of assurance. 

B. The equivalent of assurance in a view of the world- 
process as expression of personal will. 

C. Non-absolutistic confidence in the method of experimen- 
tation. 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Part I of this Bibliography gives a limited number of books, each 
bearing upon some aspect of the subject as it has been developed in 
this essay. These are noted under four heads : General ; Phases of 
the Doctrinal Situation, Past and Present ; Sources ; the Problem of 
Certainty. Part II supplies a limited bibliography of works of the 
ten modern theologians whose positions form the basis of this 
study, only books which bear in some way upon the subject under 
discussion being enumerated. Generally speaking, no attempt has 
been made to include contributions to the theological reviews. 
Where these have been noted, they are such as have been of use in 
this discussion. Works of the ten theologians whose thought forms 
the basis of this essay are given in Part II of the Bibliography, in 
no case being mentioned in Part I. 

PART I. 

1. General — 

Fisher, History of Doctrine, New York, 1896. 

Hall, History of Ethics Within Organized Christianity, New 

York, 1910. 
Loofs, Dogmengeschichte, Halle, 1893. 
Windelband, A History of Philosophy, E. Tr., New York, 

1901. 

2. Phases of the Doctrinal Situation, Past and Present — 

Cross, Schleiermacher, Chicago, 1911. 

Cunningham, The Reformers and the Theology of the 

Reformation, Essay III. 
Diehl, Herrmann u. Troeltsch, Zeitschr. f. T. u. K., 1908. 
Garvie, The Ritschlian Theology, Edinburgh, 1899. 
Hodge, Modern Positive Theology, Princeton Rev., Vol. 8. 
Kostlin, The Theology of Luther, E. Tr., Philadelphia, 1897. 
Mozley, Ritschlianism, London, 1909. 
McGiffert, Protestant Thought Before Kant, New York, 

1911. 

5 



6 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

Schian, Zur Beurteilung der mod. pos. Theologie, Giessen, 

1907. 
Stephan, D. neuen Ansatze d. conservat. Dogmatik. 

u. s. w., Christliche Welt, 1911, Nos. 44-48. 
Wendland, Ritschl und seine Schiller, Berlin, 1899. 

3. Sources — 

(Attention is again directed to the fact that the chief sources 
are enumerated; in Part II of this Bibliography.) 
Calvin, Institutes, Beveridge's Tr., Edinburgh, 1895. 
Hodge, Systematic Theology, New York, 1871. 
Luther, Sdmmtliche Werke, Erlangen Ed., 1841 ; 

Opera, 1829. 
Moehler, Symbolik, E. Tr., New York, 1894. 
Melanchthon, Corpus Reformatorum (Bretschneider's), 

1834; Loci, Plitt's Ed. Revised, 1889. 
Ritschl, Doctrine of Reconciliation and Justification, E. Tr. 
S chaff, Creeds of Christendom, New York, 1877. 
Spener, Das geistliche Priesterthum, 1677. 
Schleiermacher, Der christliche Glaube, Berlin, 1830. 
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Rome, 1901. 
Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, Mason and 

Lane Ed., New York, 1837. 

Sermons, Eaton and Mains' Ed. 

4. The Problem of Certainty — 

Clasen, Die christl. Heilsgewissheit, 1897. 

Gottschick, D. Heilsgewissheit d. ev. Christen in Anschluss 

an Luther dargestellt, Zeitschr. f. T. u. K., 1903. 
Heim, Das Gewissheitsproblem, Leipzig, 1911. 
Ihmels, Christliche Wahrheitsgewissheit, Leipzig, 1908. 
Tasker, Art. "Certainty," Ha. Encyc. Relig. and Eth., Vol. 

HI. 

PART II. 

(The order in which authors are named in this section is that in 
which their work is treated in the following essay.) 
1. James Orr — 

The Christian View of God and the World, 1893 (Kerr 
Lectures). 

6 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 7 

The Supernatural in Christianity, 1894 (with Rainy and 

Dods). 
The Ritschlian Theology and the Evangelical Faith, 1897. 
Essays on Ritschlianism, 1903. 

The Image of God in Man and its Defacement, 1905. 
Sidelights on Christian Doctrine, 1909. 
Revelation and Inspiration, 1910. 



2. B. B, Warfieli 

The Divine Origin of the Bible, 1882. 
Inspiration, 1882. 

The Idea of Systematic Theology, 1888. 
The Gospel of the Incarnation, 1893. 
The Right of Systematic Theology, 1897. 
The Power of God Unto Salvation, 1903. 
The Lord of Glory, 1907. 
u Incarnate Truth" (in Princeton Sermons). 
The Task and Method of Systematic Theology, Am. Jour, of 
Theol., 1910, Vol. 14, p. 192f. 

3. W. Herrmann — 

Die Metaphysik in der Theologie, 1876. 

Religion in Verhdltnis z. Welterkennen u. z. Sittlichkeit, 

1879. 
Warum bcdarf unser Glaube geschichtl. Tatsdchen, 2d Ed., 

1895. 
Bedeutung der Insiprationslehre f. d. evangelische Kirche, 

1886. 
Begriff d. Offenbarung, 1887. 
Gewissheit d. Glaube u. d. Freiheit d. Theologie, 2d Ed., 

1889. 
D. ev. Glaube u. d. Thcol. A. Ritschls, 2d Ed. 1896; E. Tr. 

in Faith and Morals, 1904. 
Verkehr der Christen mit Gott, 6th Ed. 1908; E. Tr., 2d 

Ed., 1906. 
Ethik, 4th Ed., 1904. 
Rom. u. ev. Sittlichkeit, 3d Ed. 1903 ; E. Tr. in Faith and 

Morals, 1904. 
Die sittlichen Weisungen Jesu, 2d Ed. 1907. 

7 



» THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

Christlich-protestantische Dogmatik (in Die christliche Re- 
ligion, pp. 583-632). 

Lage und Aufgabe der ev. Dogmatik, Zeitschr. f. T. u. K., 
1907. 

Offenbarung und W under, 1908. 

D. Widerspruch i. religios. Denken u. s. Bedeutung f. d. 
Leben d. Religion, Zeitschr. f. T. u. K., 1911. 

4. J. Kaftan — 

Soil en und Sein in ihrem Verhaltnis zu einander, 1872. 

D. Predigt d. Evangelium in mod. Geistesleben, 1879. 

D. Ev. des Ap. Paulus in Predigten d. Gemeinde dargelegt, 

1879. 
D. Wesen der christl. Religion, 1881. 
Das Leben in Christo (sermons), 1883. 
D. Wahrheit d. christl. Religion, 1888 ; E. Tr., 1894. 
Das Verhaltnis d. ev. Glaubens z. Logoslehre, 1896. 
Dogmatik, 1897. 
Heilige Schrift u. kirchl. Bekenntnis in ihr Verhaltnis z. 

einander, 1898. 
D. Verpflichtung auf d. Bekenntnis in d. ev. Kirche, 1898. 
D. christl. Glaube im geistigen Leben d. Gegenwart, 2d Ed., 

1898. 
Kant, d. Philosoph d. Protestantismus, 1904. 
Zur Dogmatik, 1904. 
Zur Dogmatik u. Glaubenspsychologie, Zeitschr. f. T. u. K., 

1911. 

5. A. Harnack — 

Das Monchthum, seine Ideal u. Geschichte, 1881 ; E. Tr. 

1895. 
Martin Luther in seiner Bedeutung fur d. Geschichte d. Wis- 

senschaft u. d. Bildung, 1883 
Dogmengeschichte, 3 vol., 1886-1890. 
Das Christentum u. d. Geschichte, 1897; E. Tr. 1900. 
Das Wesen des Christentums, 1900; E. Tr. 1901. 
Die Aufgabe der theologisch. Fakultdten u. d. allgemein 

Religionsgeschichte, 1901. 
Reden u. Aufsdtze, 2 vol., 1904. 

8 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 9 

6. P. T. Forsyth— 

The Holy Father and the Living Christ, 1897. 
Christian Perfection, 1899. 

Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, 1907 (Yale Lect- 
ures). 
Person and Place of Jesus Christ, 1909. 
Revelation and the Bible, Hibbert Jour., Oct., 1911. 

7. R. Seeberg — 

Begriff d. christl. Kirche, Bd. I, 1885. 

Lehrbuch d. Dogmengeschichte, R& I, 1895, Bd. II, 1898; E. 

Tr. 1904. 
An d. Schwelle d. ip Jahrhunderts, 3d Ed. 1901. 
D. Grundwahrheit. christl. Relig., 4th Ed. 1906; E. Tr. 1908. 
D. Personlichkeit Christi d.feste Punkte im Hiessende Strome 

d. Gegenwart. 
Leitfad. d. Dogmengeschichte, 2d Ed. 1905. 
Protestant. Ethik, in Kultur der Gegenwart, 1906. 
Offenbarung u. Insipration, 1908. 
Zur systemat. Theologie, 1909. 

8. K. Beth— 

Das Wesen des Christentums u. d. mod. hist. Denkweise, 

1904. 
D. Wunder Jesu, 1905. 

Wunder u. Naturwissenschaft (Konsist. Monatschrift, 1906). 
Empirische, Teleologie, N. K. Zeitschr., 1907. 
Die Moderne u. d. Prinzipien der Theologie, 1907. 
D. Verstdndnis v. Leben in d. neueren Naturf., Reformat., 

1907. 
D. Bindung d. Glaubens an d. Person Jesu, Theol. Rundschau, 

Jan., 1912. 

9. E. Troeltsch — 

D. wissenschaftliche Lage u. ihre Anforderung an d. The- 
ologie, 1900. 
D. Absolutheit d. Christentums, u. d. relig. Gesch., 1902. 
Gegenwart Lage d. Religionsphilosophie , 1904. 

9 



10 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

D. historische in Kants Relig.-Philos., 1904. 

Bedeutung, d. Protestantismus f. d. Entstehung. d. mod. 

Kultur., 1906. 
Psychologie u. Erkenntnistheorie in d. Religionswiss., 1905. 
Protestantismus, Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 4, 1906. 
Wesen der Religion, Kultur der Gegenwart, I, 4, 1906. 
Ritckblick auf ein halbes Jahrhundert d. theol. Wissenschaft, 

Zeitschr. f. wiss. TheoL, 1908-1909. 
Ueber d. Moglichkcit eines freien Christcntums, Weltkong. f. 

freies Christ entum ; Protokoll, 1910, p. 333 f. 

10. W. Bousset — 

Wesen d. Religion, 1903-1904; E. Tr. 1907. 
Schriftgelehrtentum u. V olksfrommigkeit , 1903. 
Was wis sen wir von Jesust 2d Ed. 1906. 
Jesus, E. Tr. 1906. 

D. Mission u. d. sog. religionsgescliicht. Schule, 1907. 
Gottesglaube, 1908. 

D. Bedeutung d. Person Jcsu f. d. Glauben, Fiinfter Welt- 
kongress f. freies Christentum; Protokoll, 1910, p. 291 f. 



10 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 11 



INTRODUCTION 



The interest of this study is to show the place which chief types 
of recent Protestant theology give the classic Protestant doctrine of 
religious assurance. The undertaking is analytical and interpreta- 
tive; only in so far can it be termed constructive, for solutions 
beyond those which will pass under review in a study of typical 
recent theologies are not here attempted. 

In the systems which will be studied intellectual certainty (Wahr- 
heitsgewissheit) and religious assurance (Heilsgewissheit) are inex- 
tricably interrelated ; not only so, they are logically related. Hence a 
study of religious assurance within the field indicated will involve 
the wider problem of intellectual certainty. Only in so far as it is 
thus involved will it be here considered. 

The First Division will sketch the history of the doctrine of assur- 
ance in Christian theology, as this forms the background of the 
current views. The Second Division will develop the content of four 
types of current theology, since these systems thus viewed in their 
various bearings afford the theological context of the doctrine of 
Christian assurance, or its equivalent. Further, in the Second Divis- 
ion, certain fundamental conceptions, as they are developed by the 
various theological types, will be considered in their bearing upon 
Christian assurance. And, in conclusion, the Third Division will 
define the alternative views which the results thus obtained suggest. 

The types of theology chosen for investigation are : Conservative 
Orthodoxy, Ritschlianism, Modern Positivism, and the School of 
Comparative Religions. While other types may be discriminated, it 
is believed that these are the most significant recent or current types. 
The choice of theologians has been governed by the simple purpose 
of confining the study to theologians who are truly representative of 
the various groups. In some cases other theologians than those cited 
would have served the end in view quite as well ; of Herrmann, 
Seeberg, and Troeltsch this could hardly be affirmed. The exposi- 
tion of the various systems of theology has been carried only far 
enough to yield what seems a sufficient perspective for the purposes 
of this study. It aims at cardinal traits, and, while attempting to be 
fair, does not undertake exhaustive analysis. 

11 



12 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 



I. PRELIMINARY SURVEY 

The note of religious assurance is characteristic of the New Tes- 
tament, however variously it may be grounded. The exulting cer- 
tainty of Romans viii will never be surpassed. We should expect to 
find a marked quality of personal assurance of the favor of God in 
all types of religion rooting in the Biblical literature. As a matter 
of fact, however, there have been marked fluctuations in quantity 
and variations in the quality of assurance in the Christian church in 
the course of its history. 

A. Views of the Basis of Assurance Before the Reforma- 
tion. 

1. In the Fathers. 

Christianity took over the revelation theory of the Jews, and this, 
reinforced by the Alexandrian belief in revelation as the highest 
source of knowledge, became characteristic of Christianity. From 
the time of Irenseus and Tertullian this belief was definitely con- 
nected with the Old and New Testaments. 1 The Nicene and Post- 
Nicene Fathers are at one in the view that a true knowledge of God 
can be attained only through revelation, and in particular through 
Jesus Christ. In contradistinction to the more liberal view of the 
Apologists and of the Alexandrian Fathers, which recognized all 
truth, in whatever system, as from the Divine Logos, the Western 
Fathers limited revelation to the Christian Scriptures. The same 
motives, in large measure, which developed the Rule of Faith and 
the Catholic Church led to the formation of a Canon, which drew 
the line on all not scripture and hence not revelation. The auctoritas 
variously exercised by these three norms had ultimately to be read- 
justed to the exercise of human ratio. Tertullian held that the 
content of revelation is above reason, and, further, that reason 
cannot comprehend it. There must be unconditional surrender 
to revelation. 2 

In the West auctoritas and ratio remained side by side, their 
relations being undefined. As a matter of fact, Stoic and Aristotelian 
rationalism was carried over into Catholic Christianity and became 
characteristic of its dogmatics and morality.* With Ambrose faith 

iWindelband, History of Philos, E. Tr., 1901, p. 219 f. 

2 Ut supra, p. 225. 

•Harnack, History of Dogma, Vol. V, p. 20 f. 

12 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 13 

is the basic fact of the Christian life ; it is faith which lays hold of 
the redemption in Christ, and not mere belief in authority ; it builds 
upon the blood of Christ. The question of salvation is not one of 
deliverance from death, as with the Eastern theologians so largely, 
but is concerned with deliverance from sin and its consequences. 1 In 
Augustine, however, ratio is the organ by which God reveals Him- 
self to man. This thought, which was clearly defined in his first 
period, he never surrendered; yet it was limited in a marked way 
by the admission that the knowledge due to faith will always be 
uncertain here below. The only thing that can supersede it is 
revelation. He constantly "appeased with revelation his hunger for 
the absolute." Revelation is not recommended alone or chiefly by its 
intrinsic worth. Its external attestation, its certification by the 
Church, is conclusive. "Man needs authority to discipline his mind 
and to support a certainty not to be obtained elsewhere." Augustine 
was never clear about the relation of faith and knowledge; but his 
formal appeal was to authority — now to the Scriptures as above the 
Church, now to the Church as guaranteeing the Scriptures. 2 He was 
never able to rest his faith upon the rationality of Christian truth as 
revealed in the Scriptures alone. "As a Christian thinker he never 
gained the subjective certitude that Christian faith was clear, con- 
sistent, demonstrable. He declared that he believed in many articles 
of faith, yes, even in the Gospel itself, only on Church authority."' 
In his Confessions, especially Book IX, 8-12, we find the Psalmist's 
faith in possession of the living God expressed. He is the true father 
of that Catholic mysticism which was at home within the Church 
until after the Council of Trent. But the assurance which such a 
mysticism expresses did not become doctrinally articulate with 
Augustine. Justificatio ex tide, as a subjective experience, is never 
complete in this life, for the simple reason that it contemplates the 
entire transformation of its subject. Grace, to be sure, is prevenient 
and irresistible ; the external means of grace avail for the elect ; but 
only perseverance to the end can reveal the real objects of irresistible 
grace. Even the called who do not possess this final grace of per- 
severance will be lost. In consequence, there is a wide range of 
contingency in this view. Yet for himself, Augustine was sure of 
communion with God; he really possessed the certainty of faith. 

*Ut supra, V., p. 20 f. 

*.Ut supra, V., p. 125 {., Note 2. 

»Ut supra, V., p. 79 f. 

13 



14 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

Yet he held that no one can be certain that he is of the elect, and 
thus possessed of the donum perseverantiae. 1 

Harnack suggests that while he had a full horror of sin, he had 
not experienced the horror of the uncertainty of salvation; and 
that, in consequence, he did not give Christ the central place in his 
scheme of salvation by grace which he otherwise might. 2 

Augustine's philosophy is based upon the conviction of the imme- 
diate certainty of inner experience. And he regards the idea of God 
as involved in the certainty which individual consciousness has of 
itself. All rational knowledge is ultimately knowledge of God, 
though he far transcends all the forms of human thought. Such 
rational knowledge, even, as the illumination of the individual 
consciousness by the divine truth, is essentially an act of divine 
grace, for God bestows the revelation of his truths only upon him 
who through good effort and morals shows himself worthy. The 
appropriation of these truths is through faith rather than through 
insight. Full rational insight is to be the consummation ; this com- 
plete beholding of the divine truth is the acme of blessedness ; but in 
order of time, even if not in dignity, faith in revelation is first. And 
thus we are brought once again to the pathway of authority. Here 
the open question is not that which concerns the existence of a 
gracious God, but that which concerns the matter of individual 
election. 3 

2. In Scholasticism. 

Scholasticism met at the threshold of its career a twofold doctrine 
of natural and revealed religion. It developed this doctrine exten- 
sively. The two are in the closest harmony; but natural theology 
must subordinate itself to revealed, for it has its foundation in 
revelation. As a matter of fact, the scholastic theologian alternated 
between reason and revelation, while reason really determined his 
method and the structure of his system. Aquinas, the formulator of 
classic Roman Catholicism, held revelation above reason, but not 
contrary to it. Their relation is that of different stages of develop- 
ment ; philosophical knowledge is a possibility given in man's natural 
endowment, and is brought to full and entire realization only by the 
grace active in revelation. With Aquinas religion and theology are 
essentially speculative and not practical. He is an absolutist in 

»Ut supra, V., p. 204 f. 

*Ut supra, V., p. 210, Note 1. 

3 Windelband, History of Philos., p. 276 f. 

14 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 15 

thought. He endeavors to demonstrate the Christian religion from 
principles, and when in any particular he fails, he falls back upon 
authority. His theological interest is that of Augustine ; all the 
results of world-knowledge must lead to that knowledge of God 
which liberates the soul. 1 

There are truths accessible to reason, as e. g. that there is a God ; 
yet this truth could be reached by only the few, after long effort and 
very imperfectly. There are truths above reason, e. g. the Trinity. 
Even the truths accessible to reason need to be confirmed by the 
testimony of revelation. At the same time, though reason unaided 
could not arrive at the highest truths, it is her function to 
set in order even that knowledge which is gained through revelation. 2 
Philosophy, as secular science, is over against theology, which is 
divine science. But theology is above philosophy, the Church above 
the State, grace above natural ability, the supernatural above the 
natural, and faith above reason. "Faith is at bottom 'believing 
things true because God said them,' and is therefore a more certain 
basis of knowledge than science, because nothing is more certain 
than the word of God. At the same time, these things are given 
in articles whose acceptance and interpretation belong to the intel- 
lect." 3 

The type of piety developed by this view of things is mystical. In 
the mysticism of Aquinas all is intellectually conditioned. The vision 
of God is essential knowledge. "Knowledge is the means of reaching 
spiritual freedom, and the highest knowledge attained is nothing but 
the natural result of the absolute knowledge given in vision." 4 But 
just because everything is intellectually conditioned, nihil prohibit id 
quod est certius secundam naturam, esse quod nos minus certum 
propter debilitatem intellectus nostri* The entire scheme in which 
this mysticism moves admits of only "a perpetually increasing 
approach to the Deity, and never allows the feeling of sure posses- 
sion to arise." The debility of our intellect never allows the process 
of intellectual certification to become a demonstration. 6 As with 
Augustine, there is in the end a falling back upon authority, the 
churchly guarantee. To be sure, there remains the experience of 

1 Harnack, History of Dogma, VI., p. 152 f. 

2 Fisher, History of Doctrine, New York, 1896, p. 234 f. 

'Hall, History of Christian Ethics, p. 325. 

4 Harnack, History of Dogma, VI., p. 106. 

5 Summa, Pars Prima, Quaest. I, Art. 2. 

"Summa, Pars Tertia, Quaest. I, Art. 5, Resp. 

15 



16 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

beatific vision, summum hominis bonum. 1 But this is granted to only 
a very few. And beyond this there remain the judgment from 
experience, always vitiated by subjective doubts and defects; and 
the appeal to authority. As for the last of these, from the days of 
Augustine it forbade positive assurance of personal salvation, defin- 
ing it as praesumptio. Yet the Church enjoined hope, of which 
Aquinas says, it is media inter praesumptionem et desperationem ex 
parte nostra. And further, non potest esse superabundant spei ex 
parte Dei, cuius bonitas est infinita. 2 

3. The Standard Catholic View. 

The Catholic view of faith and Christian assurance developed in 
the direction indicated by Augustine and Aquinas. Believers could 
have no full or complete assurance except through special revelation 
or by the witness of the Church. Chapter XII of the Decree of the 
the Council of Trent concerning Justification makes this matter 
explicit. 

Nemo quoque quamdiu in hac mortalitate vivitur de arcano divinae prae- 
destinationis mysterio usque adeo praesumere debet, ut certo statuat, se omnino 
esse in numerum praedestinatorum, quasi verum esset, quod justificatus aut 
amplius peccare non possit, aut, si peccaverit, certain sibi resipiscentiam 
promittere debeat. Nam, nisi ex speciali revelatione, sciri non potest, quos 
Deus sibi eligerit. 8 

Chapter XIII, which deals with the gift of perseverance, enjoins 
that no one promise himself anything as certain with an absolute 
certainty, though all ought to have a most firm hope in God's help. 
Men ought to fear for the combat which remains with the world, 
the flesh, and the devil. 4 The accompanying Canons enforce this 
view. 6 

In his Symbolik Moehler has developed the Catholic view as over 
against the view of the Protestant Reformers, dwelling upon the 
grounds upon which the Catholic feeling of uncertainty rests. Cath- 
olics have no criterion by which to distinguish the operations of 
grace from the natural achievements of men, and even if they could 
distinguish the operation of Divine grace, the recollection of the 
frailty of men, who must cooperate with that grace in order to be 
saved, would render full assurance impossible. Thus the Catholic 

1 Summa, Prima Secundae, Quaest. Ill, Art. 1. 

2 Cf, Summa, Prima Secundae, Quaest. LXIV. Art 4. Secundae Quaest. XVIII, Art. 
4. Utrum spes viatorum habeat certitudinem. 
•Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II, p. 103. 
4 Ut supra, p. 103 f. 
6 Ut supra, p. 113, especially Canons XII and XIII. 

16 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 17 

Christian, "without false security, yet full of consolation, calm, and 
entirely resigned to the Divine mercy, awaits the day on which God 
shall pronounce His final award." 1 

In fact, the Catholic view of Christian assurance has had no mate- 
rial development since Aquinas. The Tridentine Decree and Canons 
merely erected into formal dogma what had long been characteristic 
of Catholic piety and teaching. The effect of it was to make men 
feel their entire dependence upon the Church as the specially ordered 
channel of Divine grace. This was the pillar and ground of hope. 
And if any individual or body of believers cut themselves off from 
this channel of grace, they must of necessity seek some other prac- 
tical basis of assurance. 

B. Protestant Views of the Basis of Assurance. 

1. Luther. 

The whole scholastic Catholic view forms the background over 
against which the theology of Luther had its development. His 
views could never have been what they were but for the definition 
and answers which Catholicism afforded his intensest personal 
religious problems. The Reformation did not start from a criti- 
cism of doctrine, but from the imperative of religious experience. 
Overwhelmed by the sense of his sin, Luther fell back upon the 
agencies of the Church, upon the sacraments and the penitential 
system; but he found there no assurance of the favor of God. At 
length he found in Christ the evidence of the gratia Dei which is 
the forgiveness of sins sine merito. The incarnate, crucified and 
risen Christ is God's word, the message and revelation of the gra- 
cious God. "Out of a complex system of expiations, good deeds 
and comfortings, or strict statutes and uncertain apportionments 
of grace, out of magic and blind obedience, he led religion forth. 
The Christian religion is living assurance of the living God, who 
has revealed himself and opened his heart in Christ." Faith is thus 
no longer the acceptance of certain doctrines — assensus, it is noth- 
ing other than certainty of the forgiveness of sins. 2 

Luther never identified the Word of God with the Scriptures. It 
may be read in the Bible, or communicated by the preacher, or con- 
veyed by visible signs, i. e., by the sacraments. Luther distinguishes 
the revelation which the Word of God conveys from the general reve- 



^Symbolik. pp. 154-156. 
2 Werke, Erl. Ed. 14:24. 



17 



18 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

lation contained in the Bible and preached, and which all who either 
read) the Bible or hear preaching are acquainted with. This revela- 
tion is indeed made through the written and spoken Word, but it is 
not granted to all. 1 

On Heb. 11:1 he says, "der Glaube ist eine gewisse Zuversicht. 
. . . . der Glaube ist und soil auch sein ein Stand f est des Herzen, 
der nicht wanket, wackelt, bebet, zappelt, noch zweifelt, sondern 
fest stehet, und seiner Sachen gewisz ist." 2 The rise of such a faith 
in one's soul, through the reception of God's Word, is nothing other 
than the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is the Spirit of Christ.* In 
addition to this inner witness, there are also external signs of the 
possession of the Spirit; and these signs confirm our certainty of 
being in grace.* The witness of the Spirit in our hearts is not to 
be confounded with or set aside for the testimony of our feelings. 
Our judgment should be according to the Word of God, that is, 
according to the Gospel. 

This joyous certainty of the Christian is the theme of all Script- 
ure. The promises of God are pregnant with it. The gift of God's 
Son is the seal of it. 6 It is just this freedom and certainty of the 
Gospel which the Catholic Church denies ; and thereby it renders 
the Gospel nugatory and the Christian a slave to dead works. 7 

The sacraments and the power of the keys are. of great signifi- 
cance in Luther's thought. In the hour of uncertainty the Church 
becomes the refuge of the perplexed. The priest declares the peni- 
tent forgiven, and has full authority to declare this certainty. It 
is so hard to trust in mercy, the individual is not required to work 
out his assurance all for himself; he obtains it from the office of 
the keys. However, what endows the words of the priest with 
power is no ecclesiastical dignity or indelibility of office ; it is Christ's 
word of promise alone. 8 The place from which assurance of the 
forgiveness of sins is regularly to be obtained is the Confessional. 
At the same time, forgiveness is not a function of the priest alone. 
"Where there is no priest, any Christian person, even a woman or 
child may do just as much." 9 Such a person brings to the penitent 

»Ct Werke, 1:246. 

2 Ut supra, 37:7 f. 

•Ex. Opera, 30:161 i., on Gal. 2:16 f. 

*Ut supra. 

8 Ut supra, pp. 172, 173. 

«Ut supra, p. 180. 

7 Ut supra, p. 180. 

«Kostlin, The Theology of Luther, Vol. I, p. 285 f. 

•Ut supra. 

18 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES ,19 

the word of the Gospel, and pronounces the judgment, "Be of cheer, 
thy sins are forgiven thee." 1 

It is evident that Luther does not have in mind the Church as 
an institution and authority, but the Church or the Christian com- 
munity as medium of the Gospel. The whole external structure is 
impotent unless the individual experiences within his soul the voice 
of the Spirit crying "Abba, Father !" This response is one of faith, 
and not the product of mere feeling. When feeling is at a low ebb, 
faith clings to the naked word of the Gospel. The Holy Ghost bids 
the agitated sinner find comfort and be joyous in the promised grace 
of God in Christ. 2 It is above all things the Gospel which makes 
the heart sure.* 

The assurance of such a faith issues in the freedom of a Chris- 
tian man, which frees not from works but from reliance upon works. 
We are all equally priests, and every man is bound to direct his works 
for the good of others. Luther overthrew the outward and formal 
authorities which the Catholics had set up. He declared the media- 
tion of a priesthood, whether in confession or absolution, unneces- 
sary; he made an end to the calculation of external and temporal 
penalties ; he set aside the doctrines of Purgatory, indulgences, and 
the applied merits of saints ; in short, he overturned the whole Cath- 
olic penitential system, and substituted for it the thought of justi- 
fication by faith. The sacraments themselves, which he reduced to 
two (three), have efficacy only because they are a special and effect- 
ive form of the saving Word of God. 4 

Everything centers for him in the self-certifying content of the 
Gospel, which is wholly independent of all the channels through 
which the Gospel comes ; it is manifest in the power with which 
the Word lays hold upon the heart — a power so great that one would 
feel bound by it, would feel how just and true it is, "wenngleich alle 
Welt, alle Engel, alle Fiirsten der Hollen anders sagten, ja, wenn 
Gott gleich selbst anders sagte." 5 With Luther, then, the under- 
standing of the content of Scripture as the divine promise and re- 
mission of sin is synonymous with trust in it; assensus and fiducia 
are resolved into one. In other words, there are not with Luther 
the two steps: the validation of the Scripture as formal authority, 

1 Ut supra, where Luther's Werke are quoted. Erl. Ed., 20:185. 

2 Ut supra, 16:16 f. on Luke 10:23-37; also Werke, 12:229. 

■Ut supra, 49:285. 

4 Harnack, History of Dogma, VII, p. 212. 

'Luther, Werke, 10:163. 

19 



20 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

and the appropriation of the content of truth thus validated; we 
are certain of the Scripture only as we take home to our hearts this 
Gospel content. 1 Thus Luther does not offer the modern antithesis 
of personal certainty over against authority-faith in the Scriptures. 
The question had not arisen for him how, if the assurance of the 
individual decides for him what is divine, a greater certainty could 
arise from the Scriptures. Or, again, if the Scriptures be set up 
as objective authority, how is it possible to be subjectively certain 
of them, since all inquiries concerning their origin and authors can 
never make them certain. Logically, one would say, the Gospel 
oug J ht, in Luther's view, to be self-validating to all who hear it ; he 
recognizes that it wins no such assent, and holds that the outer 
Word is not sufficient without the inner operation of the Holy 
Spirit. This supernatural agency inscribes the outer Word within 
the heart. 2 Luther lands, as Heim points out, in this paradox : The 
witness of the Spirit is a transcendent factor over against the Word 
which lends to the Word a certainty whose nature it is to be wrought 
by no such transcendent factor. 

2. Melanchthon. 

The distinction which Luther made between the Scriptures and 
the Word of God was soon lost. Melanchthon has no formal doc- 
trine of Scripture, but quotes from all parts of it as if it were of 
equal authority, as he seems to feel. There is good reason for this. 
He had no such religious experience as Luther, and, furthermore, 
he was face to face with a situation which, as gauged by the com- 
mon world-view of the time, demanded an external authority. 8 The 
evangelical position of Melanchthon, especially in his early years, 
was essentially that of Luther.* 

Successive editions of the Loci, in proportion as they offered a 
comprehensive and articulated system of theology, obscured the 
simplicity of Luther's gospel. At first, the bold outline of the new 
Reformation position, to which he had given assent, the presence, 
influence, and warm friendship of Luther, and the simplicity of the 
situation in the church which felt itself engaged merely in a reform 
movement, led Melanchthon to neglect his humanistic antecedents 

1 Heim, Das Gewissheitsproblem, 1911, p. 257 f., where reference is made to Ihmels. 

2 Ut supra, p. 259. 

3 McGiffert, Protestant Thought Before Kant, p. 75. _ 

♦Compare his utterances on Grace, Corpus Reformatorum, xiii, Col. 630; Effect of 
Grace, ibidem: Good Works, ibidem, vii, Col. 411 f. ; "The Security of God's Children, 
Fish, Masterpieces of Pulpit Eloquence, p. 457 f. ; Justification, Loci, Plitt's Ed., p. 170. 

20 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 21 

and bent, to a relative contempt of reason. But as time passed, he 
experienced a revulsion, and began to restore reason, making it, 
alongside revelation, even if subordinate to it, a source of religious 
truth. The issue of this was a natural theology, reinforced and 
corrected by a revealed. The sharp distinction which Luther had 
maintained between fides acquisita ex testimoniis auctoritatum and 
the inniti veritati propter se ipsam is no longer maintained by 
Melanchthon. He coordinates reason and Law on the one hand with 
revelation and Gospel on the other. The Law is based upon the 
essential nature of man, the Gospel issues as a pure mystery from 
the secret wisdom of God. 1 

It is in harmony with this distinction that Melanchthon lays down 
a four-fold criterion of certainty, or rather four distinct criteria: 

Sunt normae certitudinis juxta philospohiam tres : experentia universalis, 
noticiae principiorum, et intellectus ordinis in syllogismo. In ecclesia habemus 
quartam normam certitudinis, patefactionem divinam, quae extat in libris 
propheticis et apostolicis. 2 

It is maintained that the certainty yielded by this last criterion is 
equally valid with mathematical certainty. 8 

In this view there are three moments in the attainment of cer- 
tainty. There is first the exercise of reason. This has a merely 
chronological precedence, and is decidedly limited in its function. 
Secondly, the Word of God, confirmed by miracle and the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus from the dead. And, thirdly, the inner witness of the 
Spirit. In many regards the second and third factors wholly tran- 
scend the first. In the last analysis, causa certitudinis est revelatio 
Dei, qui est verax. 4. 

According to Luther, the promise was the particular correlate of 
faith. Not so with Melanchthon, faith is not merely iiducia miseri- 
cordiae Dei promissae propter Christum mediatorem, but is — at least, 
according to the Loci of 1559 and thereafter — an assentiri universo 
verbo Dei nobis proposito. This body of truth Melanchthon came 
to designate as including "the whole doctrine handed down in the 
books of the prophets and apostles, and comprehended in the Apos- 
tles', Nicene, and Athanasian creeds." Thus, from being iiducia, 
repose upon the promise of the Gospel, faith has come to be assensus 
to "the whole teaching of the Word of God." 5 

1 Heim, Das Gewissheitsproblem, pp. 263, 265. 
2 Corpus Reformatorum, 13:151. 
8 Citation by Heim, ut supra, p. 266. 
4 Ut supra, p. 266. 
6 McGiffert, ut supra, p. 77. 

21 



22 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

The concern seems to be with certainty concerning "the articles 
of faith" rather than with personal assurance of salvation ; or, rather, 
assent to "the articles of faith," with a perception that they are 
divinely guaranteed as true, is the real basis of such fiducia as pe - 
sonal experience may yield. 

Melanchthon seems not to have realized to how great an extent 
the use of his fourth form of certainty rendered the first three 
superfluous, and their use illogical. He believed that revelation 
yields a sum of truths which are to be accepted, even although they 
may not seem according to reason, since they are certified by a 
veracious God. While he preached evangelical assurance somewhat 
in the fashion of Luther, Melanchthon was more interested in the 
certainty of truth, and was thus at heart a rationalist and scholastic. 

3. Calvin. 

It is the will of God, rather than his grace, which is central for 
Calvin, and the Bible is a publication of that will rather than a 
manifesto of grace. The distinction which Luther made between 
the Bible and the Word of God is wholly wanting; the Bible is 
always and everywhere the Word of God, and of equal authority in 
all its parts. This Bible, in order to be Word of God in any given 
case, must be reinforced for the individual's experience by the 
inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. This testimony is superior 
to all reason, and is equal to an intuitive perception of God himself 
in the Scriptures. 1 

Calvin marks the character of rational proof as wholly secondary, 
when he treats its function in establishing belief in the Scripture. 2 
The operation of the Holy Spirit is in the foreground, but is not 
held to be such as sets aside the normal activities of the individual. 
It rather quickens the understanding and the will to fresh activities. 8 ' 
It is quite clear that the whole movement of the soul is viewed as 
autonomous, though induced by a power above and objective to 
the individual, the power of the Divine Spirit. In the case of the 
elect, to whom alone the Spirit is given, that witness is coincident 
with the unique impression, the self -certifying effect, which the 
Scriptures make upon them. Faith is defined as consisting in a 
knowledge of God and of Christ ; it is not reverence for and sub- 
mission to the Church. The heart is not excited to faith by every 

institutes, Bk. I, Chap. vii:iv:v. 
2 Ut supra, Bk. I, Chap. viii. 
8 Ut supra, i:vii:v. 

22 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 23 

part of the Word of God; that which it finds in the divine Word 
upon which to rest its dependence and confidence is Christ, the 
pledge of the Divine benevolence toward us. Faith is a "steady 
and certain knowledge of the Divine benevolence toward us," and 
in the work of the Holy Spirit. 1 

It is only the elect who have the witness of the Spirit to the 
Scriptures, and they alone, as matter of course, have full assur- 
ance of personal salvation ; yet the two are by no means identical. 
Calvin remarks that "full assurance" (plerophoria) is always at- 
tributed to faith in the Scriptures. The real believer is persuaded 
that he has a propitious and benevolent Father. Yet the assurance 
of faith is not unattended by doubts, a fact which Luther empha- 
sized. 2 The dogma of the Schoolmen that it is impossible to decide 
concerning the favor of God is rejected. Faith and hope go together, 
they are sometimes used in the Scripture, it is urged, without any 
distinction.*' 

Against enthusiasts who proclaimed a witness of the Spirit inde- 
pendent of the Scriptures and affording fresh revelations of divine 
truth, Calvin had but one answer : God displays and exerts his 
power only where his word is received with due reverence and 
honor. 4 The witness of the Spirit not only attests the truth, but 
the new estate of the elect believer ; his work underlies all assurance.' 

4. Pietism and English Evangelicalism. 

That dogmatic Protestantism which succeeded the Reformation 
brought to full fruition the scholastic tendencies which were already 
manifest in the first formulators of Protestant theology, Melanchthon 
and Calvin. The inwardness and vitality which characterized the 
faith of the Reformers were in large measure exchanged for formal 
intellectualism and orthodoxy. There is no more barren chapter 
in the history of Christian thought than that which deals with 
Protestant scholasticism. The theology of this period developed the 
doctrine of the Scriptures in particular. The need of a clearly de- 
fined objective standard which should avail against the common 
Catholic use of tradition led to the acceptance of the Bible as such 
an objective standard entirely apart from the inward witness of 
the Spirit. The witness of the Spirit in the heart of the believer 

1 Ut supra, Hi :ii :vii. 

2 Ut supra, iii:ii:xvi and xvii. 

a Ut supra, iii:ii:xlii. 

*Ut supra, i :x :iii. 

B Ut supra, iii :i :iii. 

23 



24 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

was set aside as too highly subjective. The individual was held to 
be in no need of investigating the inspired character of the Bible, 
since that had already been attested to the Church by many infalli- 
ble proofs. As such a book, the Bible came to be used as a collec- 
tion of proof-tests for the establishment of a doctrinal code. In 
harmony with this point of view, it was not evangelical assurance 
which the period was interested in; it was, rather, intellectual cer- 
tainty, based upon the universally assumed divine authority of the 
Scriptures. 1 

Such was the historical background over against which the Pietis- 
tic movement had its rise. German Pietism combined the mystical 
and the practical, and depreciated polemical and dogmatic theology. 
It had, in fact, only such rudiments of a theology as its fundamental 
opposition to Protestant dogmatism demanded; the center of its 
interest lay in personal religion. Philip Jacob Spener was probably 
the most influential formative influence in German Pietism. He 
was an orthodox Lutheran, and never attacked the current theology. 
Yet he emphasized individual piety and sought to give it a sufficient 
authoritative basis. He felt that the Protestantism of his day 
accepted justification by faith in much too formal a way, and 
divorced it from sanctification to an unwarranted degree. His ideal 
of a sanctified life was ascetic and other-worldly. But his insistence 
upon real piety was undoubtedly justified by the lax and formal 
morality of the time, and the way in which the doctrine of justifica- 
tion by faith was made to serve as a substitute for personal purity 
and goodness. Justification, as Spener looked upon it, has no 
meaning apart from a regenerate and sanctified life. Assurance 
which builds upon any other foundation than a holy life is a delusion. 
The main thing is not to have peace and to be conscious that one is 
a child of God; it is, rather, to have a holy life through the in- 
dwelling Spirit of God. 2 

The position of Spener may be gathered from his little volume 
Das geistliche Priesterthum, in which he elaborates a fundamental 
aspect of his thought in the form of a brief catechism upon the 
universal priesthood of believers. Not all exercise the same priestly 
function, to be sure, but all Christians are, in one sense or another, 
priests unto God. All are to go directly to the Scriptures, where- 
even though they lack the manifold linguistic and other aids to 

iMcGiffert, Protestant Thought Before Kant, Chap. viii. 
2 McGiffert, Ut supra, Chap xi:l. 

24 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 25 

interpretation which the learned possess — they may learn and under- 
stand the truth. They may know all that has to do with their 
salvation and growth in the inner man according to the rule of grace ; 
and all this comes about through the operation of the Holy Spirit. 1 

The function of the Holy Spirit is not one of certifying to the 
truth of the Word, which is everywhere assumed. It is, rather, 
an illumination of the Word, or of the minds of Christian readers, 
that he effects. In answer to the question how the Christian must 
conduct himself to be assured of the truth, Spener lays down (Sec. 
37) a number of simple rules. The Scripture must be read in de- 
pendence upon the grace of the Holy Spirit, and with the purpose 
of applying its truth to life. Christians must see to it that they do 
not let reason act as master, but pay attention rather to the Holy 
Ghost, and believe that there is not a single word or syllable which 
the Holy Ghost sets forth without its peculiar meaning. 2 

English Evangelicalism was the child of German Pietism, and, 
like German Pietism, it was practical in its aims. As Pietism was 
a reaction against scholasticism, it was a reaction against rationalism. 
While not intended as a theological reformation, the Evangelical 
movement had far-reaching effects in the field of theology, especially 
in that portion of theology which deals with religious experience. 
By far the most eminent figure in the field of English Evangelical 
history is John Wesley. He laid emphasis upon just those doctrines 
which were being discredited by the current theological rationalism. 
The center of emphasis was removed from the external revelation 
embodied in the Scriptures to the internal miracle by which the 
soul is born anew of the Spirit of God A rationalizing orthodoxy 
was inclined to concede a large place to the revelation in nature, 
making the revelation in the Bible supplementary. But in the 
view of Wesley no amount of mere revelation could meet the need 
of sinful man. Christ, as the divine Redeemer who makes a vicari- 
ous atonement for sin, and the Holy Spirit, as the quickening instru- 
ment of God who renews the heart of the believer and abides 
therein, became the two cardinal points of Evangelical preaching 
and belief. 

In Wesley's view, salvation is no mere forensic transaction; it 
is a vital renewal of the heart, a "present deliverance from sin, a 
restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity, 

x Spener, Das geistliche Priesterthum, 1677, p. 38 f. 
2 Ut supra, p. 41. 

25 



26 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

a recovery of the divine nature." This is the basis of the Wesleyan 
doctrine of Christian perfection. The "perfect Christian" Wesley 
describes in the following terms : 

He loves the Lord his God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his 

mind, and with all his strength He is anxiously careful for nothing, 

. . . . prays without ceasing, .... his heart is ever with the Lord, 

and, loving God, he loves his neighbor as himself; .... his heart is pure; 

his one design in life is "to do not his own will, but the will of him 

who sent him" As he loves God, so he keeps his commandments, not 

only some, or most, but all, from the least to the greatest Nor do the 

customs of the world at all hinder his running the race which is set before 
him. 1 

The "perfect Christian" has the unmistakable witness of the 
Spirit. This witness Wesley distinguishes from the witness of our 
own spirit, which we experience jointly with it. The foundation of 
the latter is laid in many texts of Scripture, by the ministry of 
the Word, by meditating before God in secret, and by conversing 
with those who are familiar with his ways. That natural reason 
which religion does not supplant but perfects, every man may put 
to service, "applying those scriptural marks to himself," and may 
know whether he is a child of God or not. 

Thus, if he know, first, "As many as are led by the Spirit of God," into 
all holy tempers and actions, "they are the sons of God;" (for which he 
has the infallible assurance of holy writ) ; secondly, "I am led by the Spirit 
of God;" he will easily conclude, therefore, I am a son of God. 2 

The witness of the Divine Spirit which is conjoined with this 
witness of our own spirits is really antecedent thereto. The Spirit 
of God, in a manner which Wesley will not undertake to describe, 
gives the believer such testimony of his adoption that "he can no 
more doubt the reality of his sonship than he can doubt the reality 
of the shining of the sun while he stands in the full blaze of its 
beams." 3 

With Wesley the witness of the Spirit is of central importance; 
and it is to be noted that he restores to the doctrine the meaning 
which Luther attached to it : that of a witness to the favor of God 
toward the individual who experiences it. This is quite another sense 
than that in which Calvin applied the term when he made it certify 
to the truth of the Scriptures. We have in Wesley a revival of inter- 
est in personal religion ; and it is quite natural that he should seek a 

1 Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, pp. 13-19. 

2 Wesley, Sermons, Eaton and Mains' Ed., Vol. I, Sermon X: "The Witness of the 
Spirit." 

•Ut supra, Vol. I, p. 89. 

26 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 27 

firm basis for personal assurance. This he finds in the witness of 
the Spirit ; "what he testifies to is that we are the children of God." 
And the immediate result of this witness is "the fruit of the Spirit." 

As soon as ever the grace of God (in the sense of his pardoning love) is 
manifested in our souls, the grace of God in the latter sense, the power of 
his Spirit, takes place therein. And now we can perform through God what 
to man was impossible. Now we can order our conversation aright. . . We 
now have "the testimony of our conscience" which we could never have by 
fleshly wisdom, "that in simplicity and godly sincerity we have our conversa- 
tion in the world" . . This is properly the ground of the Christian's joy. 1 

5. Schleiermacher. 

Religion is native to the human soul, and makes its appearance 
in consciousness in the form of feeling, according to Schleiermacher. 
Specifically, this feeling is one of dependence upon the absolute 
world-ground ; i. c, upon God, who is known only through this 
medium, and can never be scientifically apprehended. By thus 
defining religion, Schleiermacher felt that he preserved its freedom 
from philosophical complication and its integrity as an essential of 
human experience. 2 With such a fundamental postulate, it is at 
once apparent that the problem of religious certainty will be solved 
by Schleiermacher upon no basis of dogmatic or Scriptural author- 
ity, but in harmony with his philosophy. He belonged to a group of 
whom Kant, Fichte, and Schelling were members, who sought cer- 
tainty concerning the transcendent Reality not by recourse to the 
facts which lie at the basis of sense-experience, nor by means of a 
supernatural revelation in the Scriptures ; but by analysis and ex- 
clusion they sought the ultimate forms of thought in which all 
reality is given. With Kant, the result was the antinomy of the 
Theoretical and the Practical Reason, the former yielding only a 
contentless Ding-an-sich, while the latter, whose primacy over the 
Theoretical Reason he held, gave, as ground of the moral order of 
the world, the Supreme Reason — God. W 7 ith Fichte, Schelling and 
Schleiermacher, the distinction between Theoretical and Practical 
Reason is not maintained ; the two combine and yield directly a 
number of certainties concerning the Absolute Reality. 

Being and thinking emerge in consciousness ; their real adjust- 
ment would give knowledge, but they remain always in a state of 
difference — the complete adjustment of the real and the ideal is 

1 Ut supra, p. 105. 

2 Cf. Cross, The Theology of Schleiermacher, 1911, p. 108 f. 

27 



28 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

nowhere attained in cognition. This is rather the infinitely removed 
goal of thinking which desires to become knowledge, but never will 
succeed. At the same time, it presupposes the reality of this unat- 
tained goal, the identity of thought and being; this reality Schleier- 
macher calls God. 1 

To put it another way : 

... in religion man is not primarily active but receptive. It must be so, 
for though in all consciousness there is a double element, namely, the self- 
consciousness or ego, and a determination of the self-consciousness, or experi- 
ence, it is impossible that the latter should be produced by the former, because 
the ego is ever self-identical, but experience is variable. Nor could we ever 
have a self-consciousness of the ever-identical self, because such a conscious- 
ness would be destitute of all determination or of quality; and consequently 
consciousness of self is dependent upon experience. But this is just to say 
that all consciousness, our objective self-consciousness included, is dependent 
upon a prior influence exerted upon our receptivity. We are compelled there- 
fore to seek the common source of our being and experience in an Other. 2 

God is not an inference; he is not arrived at after a process of 
reasoning, but is immediately given in the sense of dependence which 
we feel toward the ultimate world-ground. ''The true God denotes 
the whence of our sensible and self-active existence." 3 

While the sense of dependence upon God is not wanting in man- 
kind in general, it is only within the Christian community and 
through Christ himself that it is exalted to a place of dominance. 
That state of being in which the God-consciousness is depressed 
and dominated by the sensuous consciousness is denominated sin. 
The conflict between the submerged God-consciousness and the 
dominant sensuous consciousness produces pain. Through the 
Christian community we are brought into contact with Christ, 
through whom we gain a controlling God-consciousness. That God- 
consciousness, which was his entire personal consciousness, is medi- 
ated to the individual through the Christian community. Faith is 
the act of receiving Christ as he is presented by the Christian com- 
munity. He who has thus received Christ is conscious of partici- 
pation in his blessedness. The common spirit of the Christian 
community, which is the Spirit of Christ, or the Holy Spirit, uttered 
itself in the writings of the New Testament, the form of all sub- 
sequent presentations of the person of Christ. Faith in Christ is 
not, however, to be reposed upon the authority of the Scriptures; 

»Cf. Windelband, History of Philosophy, p. 582. 

2 Cross, ut supra, p. 120 f. 

*Der christliche Glaube, Sec. 4 :4. 

28 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 29 

at the same time, the Scriptures may be the means of its awakening. 
Faith is an inner certainty accompanying the higher self-conscious- 
ness; yet it is not an objective certainty based upon demonstration. 1 
Da nun aber Jeder nur vermittelst eines eigenen freien Entschlusses hine- 
intreten kann; so musz diesem die Gewissheit vorangehen dasz durch die 
Einwirkung Christi der Zustand der Erlosungsbediirftigkeit aufgehoben und 
jener herbeigefiihrt werde, und diese Gewissheit ist eben der Glaube an 
Christum. 2 

Schleiermacher's discussion makes certain things clear. He is 
using conventional terms in an unconventional sense; and just as 
this yields a new result for the general view of Christian doctrine, 
so it does in the matter of Christian assurance. It is clear that 
with him the Scriptures hold no such place as they had before 
held in Protestant theology, either as touch-stone of truth, or as 
norm of the certainty of personal salvation. Further, personal as- 
surance is directly related to Christ. At the same time, it must be 
recognized that Schleiermacher the philosopher, and Schleiermacher 
the theologian never really got together. 8 For his philosophy, as 
Heim points out, seeks the a priori of universal logical validity, 
while his theology starts with a contingent historic figure — that of 
Christ ; and that which, from the philosophical side, he views as 
inadequate symbol, from the churchly side he allows universal 
speculative validity. Schleiermacher has far more significance for 
the method of Christian theology as a whole than for any specific 
contribution to the problem of personal assurance. 

C. The Nineteenth Century. 

The advent of an inductively-grounded scientific theory of evolu- 
tion was, beyond question, the most far-reaching and significant 
development in the field of thought witnessed by the Nineteenth 
Century. The broad, present-day conception of organic world-proc- 
ess, as over against the earlier view of static mechanism, was of 
comparatively slow development. As theory, it had won its place 
before 1830, but it was not tested out in the laboratory until much 
later. Charles Darwin's epoch-making "Origin of Species," 1859, 
afforded this confirmation, while Herbert Spencer in his Synthetic 
Philosophy gave the theory a wider currency and a more extensive 
application. Thus, hand in hand with the development of the evo- 



J Das Gewissheitsproblem, p. 376. 
2 Cf. Cross, ut supra, p. 139 f. 
3 Der christliche Glaube, Sec. 14: 



29 



30 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

lutionary hypothesis went the application of the method of induc- 
tion. As the theory of genetic process was at length accepted as 
the fundamental working hypothesis of all the sciences, and has 
found its application in the broad field of philosophy and religion 
as well, so also the method of induction has supplanted the deductive 
method in all these fields. The impulse to examine data had led to 
extensive activities in many fields — as archeology, philology, biology 
— before the general acceptance of the theory of evolution; but 
when once this theory became an actual working hypothesis of the 
scientific world, investigation in all these, and in numerous virgin 
fields, was vastly increased, and the process was directed and results 
coordinated in a manner unparalleled. And today the method of 
observation and induction holds the field in every department of 
science. 

The adoption of a new method carried with it the reorganization 
of all the developed sciences, and the creation of sciences before 
unheard of. "Geology, embryology, comparative philology, the his- 
tory of religion, of social institutions, of art, of politics, anthropolog- 
ical research, sociological generalization — these are the great new 
achievements of Nineteenth-Century science." 1 It would be too much 
to claim that all these had their rise from the impulse given by 
the newly- framed theory of evolution. They did not ; but they 
received an extension and gained a significance therefrom which 
would have been impossible otherwise. 

The application of the idea of process in the provinces of philoso- 
phy, psychology, ethics, history, and the new science of sociology, 
has brought about results undreamed of by the classic formulators of 
these sciences. Philosophy today studies life instead of proceeding 
deductively from a priori principles ; psychology goes back of psychic 
phenomena to seek the physical and social conditions which make 
possible the observed spiritual process ; ethics seeks to view the field 
of morals in connection with developing situations which gave rise 
to successive standards ; history no longer devotes itself to isolated 
great men, but recognizes the sway of social movements and seeks 
to trace the powerful undercurrents of the common life; while 
sociology devotes itself to no mere gathering of anthropological 
data, but, recognizing society's common responsibility, seeks in his- 

1 Royce, Herbert Spencer, p. 41. 

30 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 31 

tory and environment the causes of social need and distress, and 
indications of social solutions. 

We need do no more here than remind ourselves of theology's 
struggle with the changing world-view. She could not maintain 
herself in isolation, and little by little, in one department and another, 
altered both her method and her content; the whole trend of her 
progress, in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century particularly, 
was toward the exchange of the method of authority for the 
method of free induction from the data of history and experience. 
The common principles of modern historical science were applied 
to the Biblical history, there arose a more humanitarian interest in 
Biblical personages and situations, followed by an attempt to con- 
ceive the conditions and social influences which could give rise to 
the movements and controlling concepts of the Biblical history and 
literature. In other words, from being treated as detached and 
divine in essence, the Biblical literature and history, with its great 
ideas, personages, and movements, came to be thought of as a sec- 
tion of universal history, to be understood and interpreted as such. 
To be sure, this trend was not universal, even at the end of the 
Nineteenth Century, but it was the new and dominant aspect of the 
historical study of the Biblical literature. 

The passing of the authority method was accompanied by the 
breakdown of systems of theology. If the assumption underlying 
systems of theology, that the Scriptures afford a content of 
revealed truth, which is the chief fabric from which theology 
must shape its formulae, be set aside, then the formal shaping of 
such systems must come to an end. Quite in harmony with this 
necessity, those Nineteenth Century types of theology which passed 
beyond the merely mediating stage did not develop fully articulated 
systems. This was true of the Ritschlian school ; it was also true 
of those liberal theologians whose theological position was deter- 
mined by a thorough-going acceptance of philosophical postulates. 
Upon whatever basis, these systems sought to legitimate such ele- 
ments of religious faith as seemed to them essential to its perpetua- 
tion. It is true, however, that the numerical majority continued to 
use the authority method, with such modifications of philosophical 
or scientific views as seemed not to destroy the fundamental postu- 
lates of authority religion, introduced in an entirely subordinate 
relation. Thus, evolution, after a sort, found its way into many 

31 



32 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

conservative systems, as did likewise the philosophical concept of 
immanence. Certain results of the inductive process, too, were 
felt to have a place and value as corroborative of revealed truth. 
At the same time, the real essentials of faith and experience were 
held to be a gift of divine grace from the supernatural realm. 
Whatever concessions in detail here and there have been made, this 
is the essential position of Conservative Orthodoxy; and when it 
recedes from this position it ceases to be Conservative Orthodoxy. 
It cannot be otherwise, for Conservative Orthodoxy proceeds from 
the assumption of a final content of truth revealed in the Scriptures 
and interpreted by the great ecumenical creeds. 

Modern Positivism has scarcely passed beyond the mere busi- 
ness of mediation. Though feeling very strongly the pull of the 
modern scientific world-view, the Modern Positive is an absolutist 
and an authoritarian at heart. Not the Bible but "the Gospel" is his 
final norm. The Ritschlian endeavors to keep his scientific truth 
and his religious experience in two sealed compartments, each with 
a validity norm of its own, and each quite independent of the other. 
If Christianity were a system of truths, it would have to be related 
to the truths of science, but being fundamentally an experience, 
it is under no such imperative; neither science nor philosophy can 
predetermine it, only a fact of history can do so. 

The rise of a science of Comparative Religion, which seeks in 
the religious ideas, customs, and experiences of humanity a basis 
for its generalizations, indicates a cutting loose from the authority 
method and the thorough-going application of the method of induc- 
tion. Should this become general, should expounders of the Chris- 
tian faith, rejecting a static authority basis, seek to ground faith 
and to satisfy religious needs by a broad induction from the field 
of religious history, it is manifest that a restatement of every doc- 
trine vital to such a life would be demanded, and that the passing 
of elements not thus vital would be involved. Liberal Protestant 
theology has already taken that step. 

The doctrine of personal religious assurance has, as we shall 
see, been seriously affected by the movements of thought of the 
Nineteenth Century. Conservative Orthodoxy still grounds it super- 
naturally upon the whole series of Divine interpositions in human 
history and experience. Ritschlianism grounds it in the person 
of Jesus, a historical fact, which— mediated through the Christian 

32 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 33 

community — becomes the basis of individual experience of the 
gracious God. Modern Positivism grounds it in the Gospel of the 
Son of God, an experience of whom carries with it the validation 
of a certain content of truth, as well as assurance of personal sal- 
vation. The school of Comparative Religions necessarily has 
no evangelical doctrine of assurance; yet it has a basis of confi- 
dence in the a priori of reason and the a posteriori of experience. It 
makes a thorough-going application to religion of the fundamental 
scientific hypothesis of continuous progressive change; and yet 
it reads this continuous progressive change as the operation of an 
infinite and absolute God. A yet further step is to abandon all ab- 
solutism and ground confidence in the method of experimentation. 
Some are taking this step. 



33 



34 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 



II. PRESENT-DAY PROTESTANT TYPES. 

The four general types of theology to be considered in the pres- 
ent survey are the Conservative Orthodox, Ritschlian, Modern 
Positive, and Religionsgeschichtliche. Conservative Orthodoxy is 
clearly a survival of the dogmatic outcome of the Protestant Ref- 
ormation. It represents the same general world-view and the same 
theological method that produced Protestant scholasticism. At the 
same time, it has faithfully conserved the chief religious values 
achieved by the Protestant Reformation as a whole. Ritschlianism 
was born of the Protestant line, and can show many actual affinities 
for the religious faith of Martin Luther, but it is very far removed 
from scholastic Protestantism, and from the whole rationalistic, sys- 
tem-making tendency. It was born of a Nineteenth Century situa- 
tion characterized by a somewhat rigid view of science and a me- 
chanical view of the universe, over against which it sought a firm 
basis for faith by positing a realm of religion which it is no part 
of the province of science to enter, and whose judgments of value 
are of equal validity with scientific determinations in the physical 
realm. A sufficient norm of judgment is found in the historical 
Jesus meditated by the Christian community. Modern Positivism 
is the fruit of a meditating and conserving impulse. It had its rise 
with a group of men who are interested in a body of positive 
Christian truth, and who at the same time have been more or less 
influenced by the Ritschlian plea for the historical and by the claims 
of the modern scientific world- view. The Religionsgeschichtliche 
school developed under the direct influence of the Ritschlian group, 
and has a kindred interest in the historical — rather, it has a more 
profound interest in the historical, being convinced that a scientific 
study of religions will yield data which can be used constructively 
for the guidance of the religious life of today, while at the same 
time the particular forms of religion, and the influence and memory 
of religious personages pass with the lapse of time. 
A. General Survey of Representative Systems. 

1. Conservative Orthodoxy: James Orr and B. B. Warfield. 

An extended statement of the positions of Conservative Ortho- 
doxy need not be presented here ; the general outline of this system 

34 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 35 

is quite familiar. Yet a brief review of the main features of this 
type of theology will afford us, when taken in relation to the other 
theological systems to be reviewed, the necessary perspective for 
our study of the basis of assurance. Such an outline James Orr 
affords us in his Christian View of God and the World, p. 37 f., 
from which the following section is condensed: 

(The Christian view) is a system of theism; affirms the creation of the 
world by God, his immanent presence in it, his transcendence over it ; the cre- 
ation of man in the divine image; the fact of sin and disorder in the world, 
due to the voluntary turning aside of man from his allegiance to God — a Fall 
in other words ; affirms the self-revelation of God to the patriarchs, to Israel, 
of a gracious purpose of salvation in Jesus Christ, his Son ; that Jesus Christ 
is the eternal Son of God, to be honored, worshiped, trusted, even as God is; 
that the Incarnation reveals the nature of God as triune, the activity of 
Christ in creation, the potential nature of man, the purpose of creation and 
redemption ; affirms the redemption of the world through the Atonement, 
availing for all who do not reject its grace; the historical aim of Christ's 
work as the founding of the Kingdom of God ; that the present order will be 
terminated by the appearance of the Son of Man for judgment. 

Professor Orr's work in the field of Dogmatics has been in the 
exposition and defense of this scheme. The very topics upon which 
he has written are suggestive of the field of his interest. The Chris- 
tian View of God and the World, God's Image in Man and Its De- 
facement in the Light of Modern Denials, The Bible Under Trial, 
The Virgin Birth of Christ, The Resurrection of Jesus, Revelation 
and Inspiration. There are at least four cardinal points in the gen- 
eral scheme of his theology: the Fall, Revelation, Incarnation, 
Atonement; all the minor details of the system are involved in 
these. 

His work on Revelation and Inspiration enters the field of this 
study more directly. Here the position is taken that any tenable 
Theism must complete itself in a doctrine of special revelation 
(p. 51). Prophecy and miracle were common forms of revelation. 
But Jesus Christ is the supreme revealer and the supreme miracle 
(p. 131). He assumed a true humanity, was limited but did not 
err; yet his subliminal consciousness was Godhead itself (p. 151). 
The Scriptures, as the record of the whole divinely-guided history 
of Israel and the apostolic action in the founding of the Church, 
are revelation — God's complete word for us (p. 150). This record 
is sufficient to bring us, faithfully and purely, the complete will 
of God for our salvation and guidance (p. 175). The Bible is free 

35 



36 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

from demonstrable error in its statements to a degree that of itself 
creates an irresistible impression of a supernatural factor in its 
origin (p. 216). Only upon the basis of such a revelation can man 
intelligently cooperate with God in his redemptive purpose (p. 52). 

Professor Warfield's theological system is practically identical 
with that of Dr. Orr; but his somewhat different emphasis reveals 
another interest which they have in common, viz., the development 
of the doctrinal system of Christianity, which they consider as all 
the while implicit in the revealed Word of God. Prof. Warfield 
says: 

The development of the doctrinal system of Christianity in the apprehen- 
sion of the Church has actually run through a regular and logical course. 
First, attention was absorbed in the contemplation of the objective elements 
of the Christian deposit, and only afterward were the subjective elements 
taken into fuller consideration (the doctrine of God issuing in the Trinity ; 
the God-Man; Sin; the Work of Christ; the Holy Spirit). This is the logical 
order of. development, and this is the actual order in which the Church has 
slowly and amid the throes of all sorts of conflicts . . worked its way into 
the whole truth revealed to it in the Word. The order is . . . : Theology, 
Christology, Anthropology (Hamartology), Impetration of Redemption, Ap- 
plication of Redemption. 1 

Dr. Warfield insists that Christianity is built upon facts which 
are doctrines ; that Christianity therefore is constituted not by the 
facts, but by the dogmas, i. e., by a specific interpretation of the 
facts. 2 To be indifferent to doctrine is to be indifferent to Christian- 
ity itself. In his Introduction to Professor Warfield's Right of 
Systematic Theology Dr. Orr expresses his hearty agreement with 
this view : 

if what men have is at best vague yearnings, intuitions, aspirations, 

guesses, imaginings, hypotheses, about God, assuming that this name itself 
can be anything more than a symbol of the dim feeling of mystery at the 
root of the universe, — if these emotional states and the conceptions to which 
they give rise are ever changing with men's changeful fancies and the vary- 
ing stages of culture, — then it is as vain to attempt to construct a science of 
theology out of such materials as it would be to weave a solid tissue out of 
sunbeams, or to erect a temple out of the changing shapes and hues of 
cloudland. 5 

In this view certainty is grounded upon revelation, and not upon 
revelation in experience chiefly, but upon authoritatively attested 
external revelation which conveys to us a body of truths about God, 

introduction to "The Work of the Holy Spirit," Abraham Kuyper, E. Tr., New York, 
1900, pp. xxv, xxvi. 

2 The Right of Systematic Theology, pp. 34, 38. 
3 Ut supra, p. 9. 

36 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 37 

an authoritative interpretation of Jesus Christ, and a theological 
scheme apart from which his life and death could not have their 
wonted significance for our faith. We are, first of all, certain 
of the truth; and that is of greater urgency, even, than personal 
assurance of the divine favor; and, in any event, it is prerequisite 
thereto. Personal assurance rests ultimately upon this basis of ob- 
jective revelation, but is mediated through the psychological miracle 
of regeneration and the subsequent ministry of the Holy Spirit. 

2. Ritschlianism : Herrmann, Kaftan, and Harnack. 

The most influential Ritschlian of today is doubtless Professor 
Herrmann, from whose volume Communion with God the follow- 
ing is condensed : 

The Christian has a positive revelation of God in the person of Jesus (p. 
34). Our confidence in God needs no other support. We are Christians 
because in the human Jesus we have met with a fact which makes us so cer- 
tain of God that our conviction of being in communion with him can justify 
itself at the bar of reason and of conscience (p. 36). We see ourselves com- 
pelled to recognize the spiritual power of Jesus as the only thing in the world 
to which we surrender in utter reverence and trust (p. 82). In this experi- 
ence we lay hold of Jesus himself as the ground of our salvation. Jesus 
differs from all who follow him by his conscious rising to his own ideal 
(p. 92), and he knows no more sacred task than to point men to his own ideal 
person (p. 93). In our confidence in the person and cause of Jesus is implied 
the idea of a Power greater than all things, which will see to it that Jesus, 
who lost his life in this world, shall be none the less victorious over the world. 
The thought of such a Power lays hold upon us as firmly as did the impres- 
sion of the person of Jesus by which we were overwhelmed (p. 97). It is the 
beginning of the consciousness within us that there is the living God (p. 98). 
Through the strength of Jesus the Christian is made to acknowledge the reality 
of an Omnipotence which gives this Man victory, and from the friendship of 
Jesus for the sinners whom he humbles, he gathers courage to believe that all 
these things mean God's love seeking him out, poor sinner that he is (p. 115). 
We know that in Christ we meet with God, and we know what sort of meeting- 
it is ; we know that this God gives us comfort and courage to meet the world, 
joy in facing the demands of duty, and, with all this, eternal life in our hearts 
(p. 173). 

Certainty can never arise from an equipment of supernatural power, which 
equipment is, moreover, entirely concealed, but, on the contrary, it does arise 
from the vision of a fact, when the understanding of that fact is accompanied 
by a complete change of the inner life, a rearrangement of our conscious rela- 
tion towards God (p. 175). Every devout man knows that he cannot bring 
about communion with God, but that God does it for him. This act of God 
is the revelation on which the reality of all religion rests (p. 199). Thus of 
the Christ that tradition hands down to us we can say, "In thy light do we see 

37 



38 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

light" (p. 283). This is the only presence of Christ and of God which we can 
experience, and we desire no other (p. 284). Through the heartfelt desire for 
God that is kindled by his revelation, the Christian is driven to commune with 
the world in work and in the service of his fellows (p. 321). 

When a man puts clearly before him what Christ means for him, namely, 
the God who turns toward him and fills him with a new mind for life, then 
at the same moment he makes it plain to himself that he has become a new 
creature, full of that strength that flows from the one great fact that God 
has revealed himself to us in the flesh (p. 346). This remains for him a 
miracle which lies beyond all experience, inasmuch as he never exhausts its 
meaning in any moment of conscious experience (p. 346). Two different 
powers combine to bring about the certainty of faith ; one, the impression 
made upon us by a historical personage and fact which comes to us in time; 
and the other, the moral law whose eternal truth we learn to know at once 
when we are aware of that law. Religious faith in general arises when a 
man runs against an undeniable fact which compels him by force of what 
lies in it to recognize that in it God is touching his life (p. 355). 

All Herrmann's theological views are in harmony with the 
positions indicated above. The conventional terminology which he 
uses is given a new content. He feels that the positive theologians, 
against whom he particularly inveighs, have not acknowledged nor 
even felt "the spiritual requirements which science creates." He 
himself feels them so keenly that he seeks a way of escape by 
positing religion as a thought that science cannot ground, but which 
itself grounds the inner life of each individual. Science must 
recognize in religion another way of comprehending and ordering 
reality, standing alongside itself. And in turn religion must give 
like place to science as yielding demonstrable knowledge, the two 
together forming the interrelated yet profoundly distinct forms of 
our existence, the revelations to us of a hidden whole. 1 

Our need for the revelation which we have in the historical Jesus 
arises from the conflict of all the forces of our existence with the 
good. To meet our need, God touches us in a historical fact, through 
the intrinsic qualities and immediate effects of which we are assured 
of its Divine source ; we no longer have need of miracles ; the deity 
of Christ is not a term to be contended for, it can mean at most 
only that in the human life of Jesus God turns to sinners and opens 
his heart to them; "redemption" is fulfilled by Jesus in the revela- 
tion which he affords of the blessedness of the man who is in 
fellowship with God ; but in order to make such a revelation, he had 

^Zeitschr. f. T. u. K. Vol. 17 (1907), p. 197 f . ; Lage und Aufgabe der evangelischen 
Dogmatik. 

38 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 39 

to be perfected through suffering, and in that sense he won redemp- 
tion by his vicarious suffering. 

In this scheme the starting-point is sin; redemption is by revela- 
tion, in a unique human life so indwelt and motivated as to thought 
one with God; this unity, however, is not one of substance, nor 
can it be described by any conventional terms referring to divine 
and human nature. The experience of this revelation gives us power 
and impulse to will the right, an activity which is the counterpart 
of our life of faith and dependence upon God. Doctrines are not 
antecedent to faith, but are its product ; it is not they which perpetu- 
ate Christianity, but the community of experience arising from con- 
tact with the historical Jesus, who affords a vision of God. 

The twofold basis of certainty in this view is that the demands of 
the moral nature yield as postulate a God through whom the moral 
spirit reaches freedom and autonomy, and that this postulate of 
the practical reason is confirmed by the experience which one has 
when he meets the historical Jesus, the rise of a conviction within 
him that in Jesus God is seeking to commune with him. 

In his more philosophical treatise The Truth of the Christian Re- 
ligion Julius Kaftan concludes that it is impossible by means of 
common knowledge or positive science to attain to an apprehension 
of the First Cause and Final Purpose of all things. Only an ideal- 
istic philosophy can give us the highest knowledge. 1 Our method 
must start with the primacy of the will in our self-consciousness 
and of the practical reason in our philosophical speculation 
(p. 302). Only an idea of the chief good can serve as the 
principle of a philosophy based on practice (p. 222). And 
only the idea of the Kingdom of God as the chief good of 
humanity answers all the demands of truth, rationality and 
validity upon such an idea (p. 325) ; for the chief good must secure 
perfect and unconditional satisfaction for the human soul (p. 328). 
As the idea of the highest good, the Kingdom of God is a postulate 
of reason; Kant's distinction between the theoretical and practical 
reason is here intentionally dropped, for all reason is practical in one 
aspect of it (p. 381). Kant does not go beyond the postulate as 
such; if we are not to end there, the eternal Kingdom of God must 
have been proclaimed in the world, in history, by a Divine revela- 
tion (p. 381 f). That inner experience by which the fact of the 

J Cf. p. 422 f. 

39 



40 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

Kingdom of God becomes certainty to the individual is possible 
only in relation to revelation (p. 385). Thus reason and revela- 
tion meet in the chief good (p. 386), yet only where the subjective 
need lays hold of revelation as objectively given and self-announcing 
is certainty attained (p. 387). This revelation objectively given is 
Jesus Christ. Jesus is a historical person, that history of which he 
was center is an inseparable unity of word and deed, of teaching 
and life, and that history is God's revelation to us. The revelation 
does not lie in a teaching concerning the life and deeds, the death 
and resurrection of Jesus, but just in these things themselves. 1 

The Scriptures are sources of the divine revelation, but Jesus is 
in the highest sense that revelation itself. Hence we ask what he 
announced as life's highest good. From the New Testament we learn 
that it was the Kingdom of God. This is essentially what every 
religion proclaims as the chief fact. The Kingdom of God is, there- 
fore, our highest good and our supreme ideal, both in one. 

The uniqueness of Christianity lies in the fact that while it re- 
mains most closely united with its historical origin, it is yet uni- 
versal as no other religion is. Though based upon the revelation of 
the highest good revealed by the historical Jesus, yet it reckons only 
upon what is universal among mankind — the religious need and 
the ethical tendency of man. 2 

Over against the highest good is the fact of human sin; man is 
by nature unfree and under the rule of sin. Sin is defined as "alles 
menschliche Wollen und Handeln, welches in tatsachlichem Wider- 
spruch mit dem gottlichen Willen stent." 8 In the Christian religion it 
is made clear that the natural life of man is sin and wretchedness. We 
become aware of the divine anger. At the same time, God is re- 
vealed to us in Christ as willing our salvation, and calling us, in 
spite of our guilt, into his Kingdom. We are Christians when we 
receive in faith the offered justification, and, as partakers in the 
reconciliation, win the eternal life in participation in the transfigured 
life of the risen Lord. 4 

Thus Kaftan makes a use of the risen Christ which Herrmann 
declines. He also makes a place for the mystical element of 
Christianity, which Herrmann declines to do. 5 The apologetic start- 

1 Wesen der christlichen Religion, p. 340 f. 

2 Ut supra, p. 269. 

8 Ut supra, p. 295. 

*Ut supra, p. 317. 

B Garvie, The Ritschlian Theology, p. 158. 

40 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 41 

ing-point of Herrmann is the human consciousness of the uncondi- 
tioned moral law ; while with Kaftan it is the "supermundane King- 
dom of God," or the highest good, as a postulate of reason. 1 

According to Kaftan, the work of the Holy Spirit takes place 
in the inner life of the human spirit. Here the Spirit of God lays 
hold of man, and under this influence he first appreciates what the 
revelation of God in Christ really signifies; consequently this work 
of the Holy Spirit is to be understood as the continuation of the 
revelation, and as in a certain sense its fulfillment. 2 

Der Geist Gottes, welcher da erleuchtet, ist der Geist des Herrn, und die 
Erleuchtung selbst ist ihrem Inhalt nach nichts anderes als die heilsame 
Erkenntnis Jesu Christi, d. h. nicht eines Princips, das er in die Welt 
gebracht, sondern seiner geschichtlichen Person. 31 

No man can have the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit independ- 
ently of the knowledge of Jesus Christ; this knowledge is primary, 
for otherwise Christ would not be the perfect revelation of God, 
but would be superseded by the Holy Spirit. 

Like Herrmann, Kaftan holds that faith has a province of its 
own. "Der Glaube ist selbst ein Erkennen, das sich auf das Ganze 
der uns gegebenen Wirklichkeit richtet . . ." 

Das der Glaube seine Logik fur sich habe, auf den ihn beherrschenden Ideen 
begriindet, heiszt, dasz er im Erkennen anderen Gesetzen folgt als die theoret- 
ische Welterklarung der Wissenschaft. 4 

While Kaftan uses more of the conventional terms, or makes an 
effort to give these terms a more conventional content than Herr- 
mann does, his view is not fundamentally different in its main out- 
lines. While the rational at one end of the line and the mystical 
at the other receive more emphasis than with Herrmann, certainty 
is grounded preeminently in the revelation of God in history in the 
person of Jesus, a revelation which takes up the thought supplied 
by natural reason — the idea of the highest good — and confirms and 
gives content to it. 

Harnack manifests the same insistence upon the historical Jesus 
which we find in Herrmann and Kaftan. The New Testament 
phenomena are such that Jesus must be honored as a unique per- 

iOrr, Ritschlianism, p. 198. 

2 Wesen der christlichen Religion, p. 345. 

s Ut supra, p. 347. 

*Zur Dogmatik, p. 51. 

41 



42 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

sonality. 1 He believes that since the days of Strauss historical criti- 
cism has succeeded in restoring the credibility of the portrait of Jesus 
in its main outlines. The Gospels afford us a plain picture of the main 
features and application of Jesus' teaching; they tell us how his 
life issued in the service of his vocation; and they report the im- 
pression which he made upon his disciples and which they trans- 
mitted. 2 There were three moments in the message of Jesus, as 
Harnack interprets it, viz.: (1) The Kingdom of God and its 
Coming, (2) God the Father and the infinite value of the human 
soul, (3) The higher righteousness and the commandment of love. 8 
The Kingdom of God, as Harnack understands it, is 

Firstly, . . . something supernatural, a gift from above, not a product 
of ordinary life. Secondly, it is a purely religious blessing, the inner link 
with the living God; thirdly, it is the most important experience a man can 
have, that on which everything else depends ; it permeates and dominates his 
whole existence, because sin is forgiven and misery banished. 4 

The Fatherhood of God carries with it the infinite value of the 
human soul. The Gospel is the Fatherhood of God "applied to the 
whole of life; (it is) and inner union with God's will and God's 
kingdom, and a joyous certainty of the possession of earthly bless- 
ings and protection from evil." 5 The higher righteousness causes 
love and mercy to displace empty ritual acts, makes the crux of 
morality to lie in disposition and intention, reduces morality to one 
principle — love, and frees morals from all alien connections, while 
revealing religion as its soul. 6 

Thus the Gospel is not in all respects identical with its earliest 
form, but that earliest form contained something which, under dif- 
ferent historical forms, is of permanent validity. 7 The Gospel as 
Jesus preached it had to do with the Son, and not with the Father 
only. He is the way to the Father, appointed by the Father, and 
thus he is the Judge of all. He was, and is still felt to be, the per- 
sonal realization and strength of the Gospel. 8 

The Gospel is no system of theoretical doctrines of universal 
philosophy ; it is doctrine only in so far "as it proclaims the reality 

1 Harnack, Christianity and History, pp. 37-38. 

2 What is Christianity, p. 31. 

3 Ut supra, p. 51. 

4 Ut supra, p. 62. 

B Ut supra, p. 65. 

•Ut supra, pp. 71, 72. 

7 Ut supra, p. 13 f. 

8 Ut supra, pp. 130, 144, 145. 

42 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 43 

of God the Father. It is a glad message assuring us of the life 
eternal," teaching us how to lead our lives aright. The Protestant 
Reformation went far toward the restoration of this Gospel. It 
was a "critical reduction to principle," releasing religion from "the 
vast and monstrous fabric which had been previously called by its 
name," and reducing it to its essential factors — the Word of God 
and faith. 1 

In the sense in which Luther took them, both can be embraced in one 
phrase : the confident belief in a God of grace. They put an end — such was 
his own inner experience, and such was what he taught — to all inner discord 
in a man ; they overcome the burden of every ill ; they destroy the sense of 
guilt; and, despite the imperfection of a man's acts, they give him the cer- 
tainty of being inseparably united with the holy God. 2 

The tendency to turn aside from the validating of objective doc- 
trine to the development of the implications of Christian experience 
goes back to Schleiermacher. The rapidly developing historical 
disciplines virtually denied the scientific character of dogmatics. 
With Schleiermacher the historical disciplines were given entire free- 
dom and their negative issue disregarded, since it was held that 
religious knowledge goes back to experience. This position toward 
science was assumed by Ritschl ; but he avoided the pitfall of mere 
subjectivism by emphasizing the objective revelation in Jesus Christ. 

Ritschlianism found no way to reconcile the demands of thought 
with the convictions of the Christian community other than the 
postulation of a distinct sundering of the province of religion from 
that of philosophy. It set forth a reasonable, practical, manly 
Christianity as over against a weakly Pietism. The positive elements 
of Christianity which Ritschl sought to ground, especially his 
grounding of theology upon the relation of God in Christ, have ex- 
ercised a profound and widespread influence upon religious thought. 8 ' 

It is a common feature of the Ritschlian theology that it believes 
itself to have discovered a way to certainty which exactly meets 
the twofold demand for moral and intellectual autonomy, and which, 
at the same time, avoids the pitfalls of a dogmatic supernaturalism. 
Jesus as a historical figure has unique and God-revealing signifi- 
cance for us. And this meaning is not to be pressed back upon de- 
tails dependent upon the more or less uncertain results of criticism. 

Wt supra, p. 269. 
2 Ut supra, p. 271. 
*Cf. Wendland, Ritschl und seine Schuler, p. 133 f. 

43 



44 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

The Christ of community tradition, the main outlines of whose por- 
trait are historically certain, suffices. That figure overcomes us, 
masters us, brings us assurance of the highest good, proclaims to 
us a gospel of grace, indeed. But he is himself the revelation, with- 
out which what he said would have no weight of revelation; and 
the impress of his personality, mediated to us through the Christian 
tradition, through the community life, brings us a sense of the 
gracious God, his Father, and affords us moral strength to will and 
to do the Divine will in the common walk of life. There again we 
meet the gracious God, whose will our daily lives thus bring to 
realization. 

Ritschlianism refuses to put its faith in revelation into conven- 
tional formulae, and will not at all define the uniqueness of Jesus 
by means of the old categories. Its rock of certainty is, neverthe- 
less, the supernatural revealing activity of God. 

3. Modern Positivism: Forsyth, Seeberg, Beth. 

Logically Modern Positivism stands much closer to Conservative 
Orthodoxy than Ritschlianism does, but chronologically Ritschlian- 
ism anticipates it. Like Conservative Orthodoxy, Modern Positivism 
is convinced that revelation guarantees certain cardinal truths, that 
Christianity is not a series of facts or a single supreme event in 
the midst of history, but that it is supremely a certain way of under- 
standing the facts. 

Of the three representatives of the Modern Positive group with 
whom this study concerns itself, Forsyth approaches most nearly 
the scope and emphasis of Conservative Orthodoxy. In his Positive 
Preaching and the Modern Mind he expresses himself as wishing 
to be understood as a Modern Positive theologian. He defines this 
type of theology thus : 

(It is) a theology which begins with God's gift of a superlogical revelation 
in Christ's historic person and cross, whose object was not to adjust a con- 
tradiction, but to resolve a crisis and save a situation of the human soul 
(p. 210). 

Dr. Forsyth makes a number of concessions to the demands of 
science and modern thought. The Gospel is distinguished from the 
Bible as having created the Bible (p. 15) ; verbal inspiration is hope- 
lessly gone (p. 165) ; a fixed and final system of theology is ad- 
mitted to be inconsistent with the genius of the Gospel (p. 208) ; we 

44 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 45 

are counselled to distinguish between theoretical and practical 
knowledge and to fall in with the stress upon the latter which is 
characteristic of our times (p. 204) ; demand as to the Bible must 
be reduced, but demand as to the Gospel pressed (p. 373). In prac- 
tically all these matters there is ostensible agreement with the Ritsch- 
lian school; but the limit of such agreement soon becomes evident. 
Forsyth is an insistent supernaturalist : 

The Church must descend on the world out of heaven from God. Her note 
is the supernatural note which distinguishes incarnation from immanence, 
redemption from evolution, the Kingdom of God from mere spiritual prog- 
ress, and the Holy Spirit from mere spiritual process (p. 122). The preacher 
has to be sure of a knowledge that creates experience and does not rise out 
of it. His burden is something given, something that reports a world beyond 
experience (p. 200). 

Forsyth is also a pronounced anti-evolutionist, holding that evolu- 
tion is very much overworked, and even treated as vera causa. It 
is to be feared, however, only when it becomes monistic (p. 266). 
When evolution escapes from the bondage of the physical sciences 
and its mesalliance with monistic dogma, it may well serve the ends 
of the modern church (p. 269). 

A positive Gospel will emphasize a real supernatural revelation, 
a fundamental perdition, a radical evil in human nature, and a rescue 
from without (p. 234). There must be a new nature, a new world, 
a new creation (p. 56). The only possible revelation to such a 
world is an act of redemption (p. 344). Atonement must be made, 
and only God can make it (p. 365). 

The revealing and redeeming act of God "was grafted into the great 
psychology of the race." 1 Christ does not simply reveal God; 
he is God in revelation, the gracious God revealed (p. 213). He is 
to be set apart from the race in kind as well as in function (p. 252). 
He does not help us to God, but himself brings God. He is not the 
agent of God; he is God the Son (p. 353). 

It is through the Christian community that Christ arises from 
his cross and from his grave (p. 77). 2 When thus God comes to us, 
he brings more than a mere extension of our previous horizon, and 
enrichment of our previous mentality; his is a new creation, a free 
gift (p. 54). It is an invasion, not an emergence from us. In Chris- 

^ibbert Journal, October, 1911, Revelation and the Bible. 
2 Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. 

45 



46 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

tian experience we are conscious of the living Christ ; it is evoked by- 
contact with Christ (p. 67). 

The man who is living in intercourse with the risen Christ is in possession 
of a fact of experience as real as any mere historic fact, or any experience 
of reality, that the critic has to found on and make a standard (p. 276). 

Thus Principal Forsyth's theology is supernaturalistic, non-evolu- 
tionary, holds humanity lost in sin, and salvable only by Divine inter- 
vention; believes that such intervention occurred when Christ be- 
came incarnate and died a redeeming and thus revealing death; 
holds that the Bible hands down in the Christian community a 
record of this revelation — a revelation which is the instrument of 
a new creation that brings the soul into vital contact with the living 
Christ. From the point of view of a liberal theologian, this would 
appear as essentially the earlier conservative Protestant orthodoxy. 

Forsyth's dependence is manifestly upon the supernatural in history, 
for we are sure of the living Christ in experience; we have com- 
munion with him and know him as the creator of our experience. 
The only respect in which Forsyth differs particularly from the 
Conservative Orthodoxy is in his willingness to limit the extent of 
revelation so that it shall no longer be considered coextensive with 
the Bible, but be limited to the Gospel. Forsyth also exhibits an ap- 
parent willingness to come to terms with the modern world-view, but 
this he does in no thorough-going fashion. He is unlike the Ritsch- 
lians, on the other hand, in his belief that a certain theological and 
forensic construction must be put upon the life of Jesus, and in 
particular upon his death, in order to make it Gospel; and in his 
belief that the certainty of Jesus carries with it a body of truths 
and the present-day experience of communion with the risen Lord. 
In all essentials, he bases personal assurance as the Conservative 
Orthodox does. 

Seeberg's main positions may easily be gathered from his Funda- 
mental Truths of Christianity. To be a Christian is to have faith 
and love (p. 69). Faith corresponds to the sovereignty of God, love 
to the Kingdom of God (p. 70). Christ is the expression of the 
Divine will ; his words awaken faith and give it content (p. 96). He 
is the revelation of God, God's action, his word (p. 139). He shows 
us God as merciful, loving, holy, almighty (p. 145). Humanity says 
No to God because it says Yes to the empirical world. Sin is guilt 

46 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 47 

(p. 188), it is the fundamental bent of the human soul, from which 
neither the individual nor the race can redeem itself (p. 195). 

Jesus was a man, not empty abstract humanity (p. 218) ; yet at 
the same time he was conscious of being Lord of the world (p. 207). 
In him the God-will which guides human history to salvation entered 
into history (p. 222) ; that is, the Divine Person himself entered 
so into Jesus as to become one spiritual personal life with him (p. 
224). The expression of this life had the limitation of human 
nature as such (p. 225) ; but the union of God was in Jesus fixed 
and lasting (p. 230). The human soul of Jesus is in God and: God 
is in it (p. 236). Thus Jesus was God and man (p. 237). Because 
Christ alone among all the figures of life constrains us to faith and 
love (p. 241), he is our Lord, and we pray to him; and we know 
that prayer can be made to God alone (p. 244). 

The way of redemption is the way of the cross; only as being 
necessary for man was it necessary for God (p. 215). Jesus' work 
may be summed up in the conception of vicarious atonement and 
vicarious surety (p. 255). He made atonement by remaining true 
against the heaviest odds (p. 255) ; and the cross is just the sign 
of the unyielding power of the good in the last hour of wickedness 
and pain (p. 258). Through the divine power of his Holy Spirit, 
Jesus breaks the power of sin in us, and overcomes the consequences 
of guilt in us through his holy humanity proved true on the cross 
(p. 253). 

Our individual Christianity was not effected by the instreaming of 
holy magic into our nature. Our souls receive a new content from 
the deeds and words of Jesus which live in history and in the church. 
We experience the operation of God, giving faith and love and 
assuring us of the forgiveness of sins. Thus we are born again; 
yet nothing happens to the soul that is not through the soul (p. 292). 
Through communion with Christ we are preserved and shielded (p. 
296). Marvelous means of help in the soul's struggle are not to 
be expected ; in the new content of faith and love lie the means by 
which the world is overcome (p. 309). 

In another connection Seeberg develops the truth of Christianity 
in the following propositions : 

1. We are sinners, simply unfree for the good, and enemies of 
God. We are therefore lost and condemned. 2. Christ is true God, 
as the holy Power of Love which changes us through our faith 

47 



48 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

and love into new creatures, by the Holy Ghost, whom he sent and 
through whom he works. 3. Christ is true man who became our 
representative and surety before God, and thereby established a new 
relation between us and God. 4. Thus also the holy Trinity, as well 
as the divinity of Christ, as well the work of Christ in salvation 
as the lost condition of the natural man, are made sure. 1 

Seeberg feels the pressure of science and the historical ; he will 
not debate about miracles, inspiration, Athanasian formulae and 
the like, but seeks a modus vivendi for the Christian system. He is 
a good deal more willing than Forsyth to part with a detail here 
and there ; he will not debate about terminology. Yet for him the 
person of Jesus is unique; in short, both human and divine. Sin 
is of human origin ; it is guilt. Man cannot redeem himself from 
it. God in Jesus is vicarious surety and Redeemer; yet the atone- 
ment was not a matter of quantitative satisfaction, however nec- 
essary for man. The Christian is preserved through communion 
with Christ. Thus, Seeberg makes essential use of sin, inability, 
revelation, incarnation, redemption, and communion with an almighty 
Redeemer. Though he will not argue about miracles, he believes 
that Jesus possessed powers which slip from our hands (p. 226). 

Here again, as with Forsyth, the basis of personal salvation lies 
in contact with God's supernatural revelation in Christ. There is 
the same faith that this revelation carries with it the certainty of 
revealed truths, but a greater desire to meet the demands of a 
modern scientific world-view. Instead of separating the realms of 
science and religion, as Ritschlianism proposes, they are to be har- 
monized. In keeping with the Ritschlian contention, the revelation 
of God is mediated through a historical personage, but there is an 
affirmation of certainty concerning the risen Christ which the 
typical Ritschlian will not make, and a use of conventional defini- 
tion which is likewise foreign to Ritschlian usage. The real affinity 
of Conservative Orthodox views underlying the garb of modernism 
is quite indubitable. 

After Seeberg, perhaps no more significant representative of the 
Modern Positive point of view has appeared than Karl Beth. He 
has been described as a "critical realist," holding as he does not 
simply that we know real objects in sense perception, but that a 
criticism of experience yields us knowledge of the ultimate realities, 

*Zur systematischen Theologie, p. 81 f. 

48 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 49 

God, self, world. 1 With Seeberg, he agrees that a metaphysics is 
necessary, and this metaphysics he seeks to ground by means of his 
critical realism. 

He makes a sharp distinction, however, between theological 
knowledge, which is scientific, and religious knowledge, which is 
practical ; if religious knowledge were based upon grounds of a 
theoretical or rational character, instead of upon the ground of 
personal experience and conviction, Christian faith would have to 
change with every change in theological science. Christian faith 
is, however, independent of theological science and theoretical vali- 
dation. At the same time, Christianity has a world-view peculiar to 
itself, each generation develops a world-view of its own, and just 
here the function of Christian theology appears — the function of 
bringing Christian truth into harmony with the particular world- 
view of a given age. 2 A positive theology starts with something 
given; in this case it is the supernatural origin and resurrection of 
Christ, his deity and atoning death. 8 This essence of Christianity 
must now be stated by scientific theology in harmony with modern 
thought. The Christian world-view must receive an apologetic 
handling which will bring it into harmony with modern science and 
philosophy. 

In keeping with this fundamental position, Beth attacks the prob- 
lem of harmonizing Christianity with the chief concept of modern 
science, that of development. In his discussion of empirische Tele- 
ologie, the newest tendency in science, 4 Beth shows his interest in 
contemporary science, the reason for which is the fancied discovery 
there of a modus vivendi for a theology with equal claims to a scien- 
tific character. Just as his late-born scientific hypothesis of empirical 
teleology asserts the impossibility of comprehending the organism 
with which it deals within the limits of physico-chemico formulae, 
and disclaims a complete analysis of it by laboratory means, so 
theology must recognize that its path lies in no mere mechanical 
analysis of past situations, but in an organic study of life's functions. 5 
A particular application of this principle appears in Beth's handling 
of the idea of evolution. It is seen to be teleological, involving from 
the beginning the idea of the goal ; but that idea of a goal does not 

iCf. Hodge, Princeton Review, Vol. 8, p. 214. 

2 Die Modern und d. Prinzipien d. Theologie, p. 98 f. 

3 Ut supra, p. 105; also p. 199 ff. 

4 Neue kirchl. Zeitschr., Vol. 18, pp. 23 f., 115 f. 

8 Ut supra, espec. pp. 133, 134. 

49 



50 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

signify that the goal itself was in some inchoate and embryonic 
fashion present from the beginning. A wide distinction is to be 
made between development and unfolding. The old idea of evolu- 
tion held, in common parlance, that there is "nothing new under 
the sun." 1 The present view of scientific biology is that development 
is something else than mere unfolding ; new forms are seen to appear 
which in no wise existed before. 2 Development by no means ex- 
cludes the spontaneous, unexpected, unprepared for, and independ- 
ent. Beth feels that Troeltsch has employed the old notion of un- 
folding, and consequently encounters great difficulty in relating 
the high points of human achievement to independent higher 
powers — God, etc. — which cannot be harmonized with any forecast 
of ours. If Troeltsch had employed the modern scientific notion, he 
would not have encountered this difficulty, for the thought of a 
divine-human religious history falls in with that of the activity of 
God in the progress of religion (to which latter idea Troeltsch 
holds).* In the nature of religion and its progress there will always 
be a remainder which must be recognized as its decisive factor. Just 
as in biology the nature of the organism and of life is not explicable 
down to the last remainder, so also with religion. 

The significance of this is not far to seek. As in science there 
have been discovered factors which transcend analysis, but are yet 
determinative; so in religion. In other words, through this door 
the supernatural enters, and by this means the inter-working of 
God in the presence of the soul and the progress of history finds 
validation. Beth quotes with approval Lessing's dictum that "Relig- 
ion is shaped according to the schema of descendence ;" yet it has a 
developmental history, a history expressed in the comprehensive 
education of humanity by God, who operates now by environment, 
now by the understanding, now by a temporary method of propae- 
deutic, calling and drawing men out of the world nearer and nearer 
to himself." 

In this connection the attitude of Beth toward miracle becomes 
significant. He holds that the faith that Jesus is our Savior cannot 
be complete without the idea that Jesus had absolute power over 
everything earthly. This means no breaking through or setting 

iZeitschr. f. T. u. K., 1910, p. 410. Cf. also Beth, Die Moderne u. s. w., p. 313 If. 
2 Ut supra, p. 411, where appeal is made to the experiments of Jacques Loeb, W 
Roux, Driesch, et al. 
s Ut supra, p. 414. 
*Ut supra, p. 417. 

50 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 51 

aside of natural law ; it means simply the governing of the course 
and appearance of natural processes. However, it is a question 
whether such control as Beth postulates is not equivalent to a real 
setting aside of natural law. Many of the miracles are validated 
as historically certain. 1 Yet the evangelists did not base their faith 
upon miracles any more than we do. 2 

As above indicated, Beth holds the Virgin Birth of Jesus; 
he holds also to the resurrection of Jesus, though he inclines 
to the vision theory to account for the post-resurrection appear- 
ances. 8 The accounts of the appearances cannot be harmonized. 
Peter and Paul knew nothing of a distinction between a period in 
which Jesus still appeared to the disciples and another in which he 
remained at the right hand of God. The speculation about the two 
natures does not find place in the modern view. The death of Jesus 
is the culminating point of revelation, disclosing his true divinity.* 

Schian holds that Beth exhibits two contradictory tendencies : 
first, the holding of no external authority which we must follow, 
but dependence upon positions which spring from faith alone; 
secondly, the tendency to hold fast a quite definite complex of facts 
and views to which the character of the "given" is assigned, and 
established particularly by reference to the authority of the 
Scripture. 5 

Though the items of truth which are directly given in the revela- 
tion in Christ are few in number, they are of such significance that 
they logically carry with them a much larger context of truth, which 
— if they themselves are valid — must be equally so. This seems to 
be the natural outcome of Beth's position, and it is consequently 
very difficult to maintain the distinction between theological and 
religious knowledge, in view of the fact that just these items which 
religious knowledge validates become the materials which theological 
knowledge must present to a given age in terms of its own thinking. 
Neither Beth nor Seeberg really maintains the distinction in practice. 

As in the case of Seeberg and Forsyth, Beth grounds certainty 
upon revelation. Forsyth scarcely attempts, and Seeberg does not 
carry so far, the endeavor to ground modern theology in strictly 

1 Biblische Zeit — u. Streit-fragen IV, 5; review in Theologischer Jahresbericht, XXVIII, 
II, p. 72. 

2 Ut supra, II Ser., 1 H., review in Theolog. Jahresb., XXV, p. 281. 

8 Die Moderne u. s. w., p. 230 f. 

4 Ut supra, p. 223. 

s Zur Beurteilung der mod. pos. Theologie, pp. 86, 87; of. also Beth, Die Moderne u. 
s. w., p. 197 f. 

51 



52 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

scientific terms. What Seeberg does in rather broad generalizations 
in his Grundwahrheiten, for example, Beth endeavors to make scien- 
tifically detailed and explicit. This is evident in his handling of 
evolution particularly; and he handles evolution thus carefully for 
the reason that the whole issue of a supernatural activity turns urjon 
the definition given to the evolutionary process. The supernatural 
comes in with the overplus, and may be quite unique in manifesta- 
tion and independent of what has gone before. What Beth does is, 
in the last analysis, to make everything depend upon revelation. 
Revelation is objective in the person of Jesus ; but revelation is ex- 
perienced, too, and it is just here — as with Seeberg — that assurance 
enters. No apologetic grounding can yield it ; it must be won through 
experience. At the same time, the criticism which Schian brings 
against both Seeberg and Beth, that — though rejecting the principle 
of authority — both of them insist upon a group of doctrines which 
rest chiefly upon Scripture as an external authority, is a valid criti- 
cism. While this still leaves revelation as the basis of assurance, it 
places a decided limitation upon subjective experience and the sort 
of "religious" knowledge which may be obtained thereby. 

Thus, as a group, the Modern Positive theologians are believers 
in supernatural revelation which communicates essential truths. 
These essential truths are to be harmonized apologetically with 
modern culture; the product of such harmonization, however, will 
not constitute the basis of faith ; that will in any case be the historical 
Jesus viewed through the medium of certain fundamental aspects 
of his person and work: his supernatural origin and resurrection, 
his deity and atoning work. Assurance is not less dependent upon 
history than in the Ritschlian view, but is more dependent upon a 
theological construction of the person of Jesus. The general en- 
deavor is to hold faith and science apart for experimental purposes, 
but to bring them together for apologetic purposes. Either Ritsch- 
lianism, which holds that they are — for us — incommensurables, or 
Conservative Orthodoxy — which is satisfied with revelation and pro- 
poses no scientific explanation — is more consistent at this point. At 
the same time, one feels that faith and science must be harmonious 
interpretations of the same reality. 

4. The Religionsgeschichtliche School: Troeltsch, Bousset. 
Here the general view is that Christianity is the product of a 
prodigious religious syncretism, product — in other words — of a 

52 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 53 

natural evolution. In the view of Troeltsch, the fundamental de- 
mand which science makes upon theology is just the investigation and 
understanding of Christianity in connection with the universal 
science of religion. 1 The results of science are gathered up in a 
world-view, the chief facts of which are these: The Copernican 
revolution has enormously extended our apparent world, and has 
brought to an end the old geo- and anthropocentric view ; the theory 
of descent now develops the whole organic world, from the first bit 
of protoplasm up to man, out of the cell ; the law of the conservation 
of energy and of matter points to a monstrous unity of nature ex- 
pressed through the interrelation of all its forces ; the law of strug- 
gle for existence has shown that every class value arises and aug- 
ments itself by struggle against heavy odds and by the sacrifice of 
individuals, and that this is the basic law of all living reality. 2 At 
the same time, man is not thereby reduced to a mere cog in the 
machine; he is at the summit of this development, showing that 
the process leads ultimately to a final absolutely worthful spiritual 
goal. It is the task of theology to fuse the characteristic religious 
expressions of humanity so situated with the Christian faith in God, 
to overcome a narrow and petty anthropocentrism, and to bring to 
view the holy Divine Love in this infinitely enlarged world-view.* 

Troeltsch denies the right of monism, holding that there are as 
clear indications of non-rationalistic motives as of rationalistic in 
modern world-thought. Modern thought offers no single decisive 
ground of opposition to prophetic-Christian personalism. This view 
of God is today, as ever, at the basis of every assertion of the value 
of personal life. It is the summation of all efforts after a spiritual 
content of life lasting beyond the flux of things. 4 Prophetic-Christian 
personalism is set forth in the following terms : 

(Es ist) der Glaube an erreichbare, ewige und absolute Werte der Person- 
lichkeit, an den Bestand eines absoluten Maszstabes des Wahren und Guten 
gegeniiber allem Tasten, Suchen, und Irren der Kreatur, and die Verankerung 
der idealen Personlichkeitswerte in einem ihnen verwandten Wesen der 
Gottheit, an die Moglichkeit der Vollendung der Personlichkeit in der Gemein- 
schaft mit dem gottlichen Personleben. 5 

As an immanent theism this view is a radical irrationalism, dualism, 
and personalism; so much the more because sin and suffering are to 

a Die wissenschaftliche Lage u. s. w., p. 47. 

2 Ut supra, p. 53. 

■Ut supra, p. 55. 

4 Funfter Weltkongress fur freies Christentum: Protokoll, p. 336 f. 

8 Ut supra, p. 335. 

53 



54 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

be thought of not as mere issue from the totality, but as opposition 
to the highest values — an opposition willed with the world itself. 1 

The question concerning the person of Jesus is of special interest 
for the purpose of this study. Troeltsch finds that the whole notion 
of world-Savior has suffered under the removal of the geocentric 
and the anthropocentric. 

Wo man das Dasein der Menschheit auf der Erde urn Jahrhunderttausende 
riickwarts und vorwarts verlangert denkt, wo man den Wechsel und Nieder- 
gang der groszen Geistes — und Kultursysteme vor Augen hat, da ist es 
unmoglich, diese einzelne Personlichkeit als Zentrum der ganzen Mensch- 
heitsgeschichte iiberhaupt zu denken. 2 

On the other hand, the common confession of Jesus holds the 
Christian community together; there can be no vital confession of 
Jesus unless one see in him the incarnation of the peculiarly 
Christian thought of God. If Christian faith in God were severed 
in every respect from the person of Jesus, it would be cut loose 
from all rootage in the past and would at length dissolve. No, the 
pious man is not at all hindered from placing Jesus, surrounded and 
interpreted by the choir of Old Testament prophets, and the great 
religious personalities of the following times, before his believing 
imagination, and acknowledging his as the source of his religious 
power and certainty. But one thing must be resigned, the construing 
of Jesus as the center of the world, or even of human history. How- 
ever, even though there be other cycles of history and circles of 
light in the great world-process, our highest human powers and con- 
victions remain bound up with surrender to the historical community- 
life of which Jesus was the founder. 8 

The world-view with which Troeltsch works is essentially other 
than that of which Conservative Orthodoxy makes use, and it is not 
that of Modern Positivism or of Ritschlianism. The problem of 
assurance in the old form does not arise. At bottom, the significance 
of Jesus lies in the fact that he is the embodiment of superior relig- 
ious power. Only in the vision of such a personality will faith 
rise to full power and certainty; and thus all the power of the 
Christian faith in God remains inseparable from the portrait of 
Jesus. This certainty of faith is not, however, supernatural. 4 

J Ut supra, p. 336. 

2 Ut supra, p. 337. 

3 Ut supra, p. 338 f. 

*Ut supra, p. 338. 

54 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 55 

While Bousset's work has not been in the field of systematic 
theology, he is a significant representative of the point of view of 
the Religionsgeschichtliche School. His opinions which are of sig- 
nificance for the present purpose may nowhere be better viewed 
than in his little volume, The Faith of a Modern Protestant. 

The modern world-view impresses us with a sense of our insig- 
nificance (p. 5) ; we are between the two infinities of the macro- 
cosmos and the microcosmos (p. 6). The human spirit has pene- 
trated far; yet, however life conforms to law and evolution, there is 
at bottom something inexplicable about it (p. 9). Are we only like 
falling leaves after the brief summer? We feel that we transcend 
nature (p. 13), that our true self is never satisfied but stretches 
forth beyond this finite and imperfect existence to something per- 
fect and absolute. Some try to shelve the question ; some put faith 
in a coming superman ; some are lost in the intellectual problem of 
it ; some surrender to it, and resolve to make the best of life ; some 
preach a gospel of beauty ; but others have found the way of faith 
(pp. 13-19). 

The man of faith accepts the universe courageously as part of an 
intelligent unity, behind which he finds an Absolute which supports 
his life (p. 20) : the Father of Jesus is the Lord of heaven and 
earth (p. 23). Daily we are surrounded with the mystery of it; 
governed by law as we are, the ineffable remains (p. 25). Faith 
tells us, too, that the almighty God inclines to us, he is our God (p. 
29). The Gospel announces God as seeking the individual soul. 

Kant taught us that we should seek in vain for a support for the 
Absolute in the world of things limited by space and time; that we 
should find the Absolute in the self -existent law within our souls. 
Kant is the philosopher of Protestantism (p. 43 f). 

We recognize that to speak of God as personal and Father is to 
use symbolism ; but we need symbolism, and can never resolve it into 
pure thought (p. 49). To call God Father is an act of daring 
faith, transcending knowledge (p. 49). It requires utmost religious 
energy to live in faith in the personal providence of God ; we must 
shut our eyes to the terrible reality around us (p. 52). But when 
we take the first step of faith the way gets easier (p. 54). 

Faith denies a view of the universe which makes it resemble an 
artificially constructed machine ; the Almighty is present in all that 
happens in the world ; out of the depths of his being new manifesta- 

55 



56 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

tions continually stream into the ever-going creation (p. 56). Yet 
God! keeps within the ordinances he has himself decreed (p. 58). 

We think of God through the symbol of a transfigured person- 
ality. The Gospel shows moral good and our own impotence (p. 87). 
But the Gospel frees us from that impotence which it discovers, 
through redemption and the forgiveness of sins (p. 88). Re- 
demption means to get free from the sensually-inclined self, to be 
caught up by the power of God (p. 91). We accept the law of our 
life from his hand (p. 91). Something within us must be cast away 
if the new life is to arise; in and with redemption our powers for 
good are freed (p. 93). 

Our conscience will always make us responsible for sin (p. 98), 
and so we say that our faith is a faith in the forgiveness of sins 
(p. 99). The Gospel of Jesus makes us certain and secure of a 
God who forgives sin. Jesus not merely taught the forgiveness of 
sins; he poured it forth upon the world (p. 99). A stream of cer- 
tainty concerning the forgiveness of sins has flowed into the world 
through him (p. 101). The believer needs the certainty that in 
spite of all opposition and hindrances God belongs to him and he 
to God; and he gains this when he joins the stream of religious 
certainty which issued from Jesus of Nazareth (p. 104). 

Christian belief is completed in hope. Beyond stretches an in- 
finite kingdom of personal spirits, in which each generation has 
its place (p. 116). We are brought to this faith through the great 
personalities to whom God's word was comprehensible, and revealed 
with inward certainty, among whom the figure of Jesus of Nazareth 
towers preeminent (p. 118). We have and hold our faith in God 
in the spiritual communion created by Jesus of Nazareth (p. 118). 

Bousset shows more interest in the problem of forgiveness of 
sins than Troeltsch manifests ; but even so, the forgiveness of sins 
is far from being the forensic matter which it is with Conservative 
Orthodoxy. Since in this view the forgiveness of sins — or the as- 
surance of forgiveness, at any rate — is grounded in Jesus, it is of 
interest to discover what further he has to say of the insignificance 
of Jesus. In an address delivered before the Congress of Liberal 
Religions in 1910, he discussed the theme The Significance of the 
Person of Jesus for Faith. He points out in this address that Nine- 
teenth Century theology, while building so largely upon Schleier- 
macher, dropped his view of immanence in favor of a supernatural 

56 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 57 

conception. Religion comes into humanity by revelation, instead of 
unfolding from human nature. This occasions insupportable diffi- 
culties. 1 All endeavors to base the content of our belief by reflection 
merely on history meet with peculiar difficulties. Over against this 
one-sided historicism, Bousset lays down the proposition that relig- 
ion rests on supernatural revelation in no strict sense ; it is an orig- 
inal faculty which only expands in history. Following Fries, it is 
held that the existence of the religious idea is based upon pure rea- 
son; it is an indispensable necessity consequent upon human mind. 2 
Religious ideas are not logically deducible and provable; they are a 
constituent part of our reason. 

But just here the significance of the historical for religion comes 
to light ; pure ideas are intangible, impalpable phantoms ; they need 
symbolic clothing. The higher religions live on the revelation of 
God in history, which weaves the coverings and symbols for relig- 
ious ideas. The leaders of religious evolution are the great religious 
personages of history ; they flash light into the depths of man's 
nature. The great religious personality becomes itself a symbol to 
the believing community. Thus the faith of Israel was based upon 
the person of Moses, the Iranian religion upon Zarathustra, the 
Chinese upon Confucius ; thus Buddhism conquered Brahminism 
because it was centered in the being of a personal founder. Thus 
Jesus became himself a symbol of the presence and nearness of 
God, a symbol of God, indeed; and yet only a symbol.' 

The symbol serves for illustration, not for demonstration; and 
the portrait of Jesus in the Gospels will always be more effective 
than any historical attempt. Even should science pass the ultimate 
verdict that Jesus never lived, faith would not be lost, for it has 
foundations of its own. But, even so, the portrait of Jesus would 
abide as of eternal symbolic significance. However, the historic 
reality of Jesus will stand as "das andauernde wirkungskraftigste 
Symbol unseres Glaubens." 4 

Thus Troeltsch and Bousset are in practical accord, not only in 
their theory of religious knowledge, but also in their evaluation of 
Jesus. The apologetic validation of the content of religious faith 
rests upon a theory of knowledge which yields the God-idea as 

1 Funfter Weltkongress u. s. w., p. 294 f. 
2 Ut supra, p. 299 f. 
s Ut supra, p. 304. 
4 Ut supra, p. 221. 

57 



58 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

rational. But the actual engendering of religious certainty is by 
the non-supernaturalistic method of inspiring contact, either mediate 
or immediate, with great religious personalities. As related to the 
types of theology previously passed under review, the theology of 
Troeltsch is non-supernaturalistic; yet it is not non-absolutistic. 
The ultimate basis of faith is the absolute and infinite God, who 
carries forward the universal process by the immanent law of pro- 
gressive change, and who is essentially revealed by outstanding moral 
and personal aspects of that process — chiefly, indeed, by its produc- 
tion of impressive religious personalities. The character of such 
personalities gives content to the moral ideal, and their faith becomes 
the faith of the rank and file ; in their light we see light. Jesus is, 
in this sense, and in no other, a revelation of God. The confidence 
which we gain from him is essentially that which we gain from all 
inspiring personality; its content, however, may vary from faith in 
his mercy to faith in his help, from trust in himself to confidence 
in the teleology of the world-process which expresses his will, the 
variation in content depending upon the differences of medium and 
environment in which individual faith is realized. 

Conservative Orthodoxy recognizes science, but declares it sub- 
ordinate to revelation. Ritschlianism says that science and the con- 
tent of revelation belong to distinct provinces for us — though they 
deal with aspects of the same ultimate reality, it is not our business 
to reconcile them; Modern Positivism says that science and the 
content of revelation cannot be kept in separate compartments, they 
must be reconciled ; while the Comparative-Religionists say that the 
only revelation is the ordered empirical universe, from which alone 
must be won the data of our certainty of God. 

B. Special Conceptions and Their Use. 

1. Theory of Knowledge. 

The particular application of a developed theory of knowledge 
in all the theological types passed under review in this study is 
rather to the problem of the existence of God than to the problem 
of personal assurance. The latter problem, however, implies an 
answer to the former; so that the question of a theory of knowl- 
edge, even though applied as has been indicated, becomes germane 
to our inquiry. 

58 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 59 

It is not uncommon for Conservative Orthodoxy of the type we 
have surveyed to have recourse to the Common Sense philosophy 
of the Scottish School, which holds that experience gives us objects 
beyond. Upon the basis of this view a catalogue of intuitions is 
drawn up. Among these first truths — whose criteria are simplicity, 
universality, and necessity — the idea of God is found. The know- 
ledge of God, accordingly, is not due to a process of reasoning. 1 
What the mind perceives, either intuitively or discursively, it knows. 
The knowledge of God is an intuitive perception. Equipped as he 
is with this intuitive means of knowledge, fallen man is not able 
to give that content to the idea of God which will serve his religious 
needs; hence the necessity of revelation. Fallen man can never, 
unaided, attain to the knowledge of God necessary to salvation; 
he cannot, apart from revelation, know what is necessary to salva- 
tion. At the same time, his natural endowment of reason is divinely 
adapted 1 to the reception of revelation ; its office is the apprehension 
of the truths offered by revelation. 

In the opinion of Dr. Orr, there is no logical halting-place short 
of agnosticism, if the ground of revelation be once left behind. 
A real theism cannot long remain a bare theism. 2 We must believe 
in a God who has a word and message for mankind, a God who, 
having the power and will to bless mankind, does it. 3 In the Chris- 
tian view, God does thus enter history, giving man such knowledge 
of himself as enables him to attain the ends of his existence and 
to cooperate in carrying out the Divine purpose. 

In unscholastic phrase, man is undone by his ignorance and de- 
pravity. God comes across the boundaries of his knowledge and 
brings him, by means of successive theophanies and inspirations, 
a sufficient body of truths to serve his religious needs. But man 
needs power as well as knowledge; this he receives as the sequel 
of a course of Divine activity — an activity which clears the Divine 
docket and frees man from all liability thereunder. Upon the basis 
of this, God enters the individual soul directly, and by repeated 
contacts infuses power. This impartation is, however, conditioned 
by, or the occasion of, a reciprocal activity of faith and obedience. 

It is clear that a theory of religious knowledge cannot have the 
same significance where the idea of revelation is taken seriously 
that it has where the contrary is true. 

»Cf. Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, p. 191 f. 

2 Christian View, p. 64. s Ut supra, p. 92 f. 

59 



60 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

The Ritschlian theology adopts the distinction between theoretical 
and practical knowledge — a distinction which goes back to Schleier- 
macher, as has already been indicated. But it encounters the dan- 
ger, on the one hand, of making all Christian doctrine purely sub- 
jective and thus reducing Christianity to mere natural religious senti- 
ment; and, on the other hand, the danger of over-elaborating the 
speculative element, as the mediating theology does. In order to 
steer a straight course, Ritschlianism strongly affirms an objective 
revelation in the historical Christ, while at the same time making 
all religious knowledge of a practical character. This emphasis 
upon the practical character of religious knowledge intends merely 
to recognize that proof cannot mean in theology what it does in 
natural science, but that in theology knowledge must be a matter 
of personal conviction growing out of individual experience. 1 

Herrmann, as we have seen, is careful to guard this practical 
character of religious knowledge from the implications of mysticism. 
God is a reality to us only when through our own experiences we 
feel ourselves to acknowledge him as real. Herrmann's second 
objective ground of certainty is very significant — viz., the fact that 
we have within us the demand of the moral law. Ritschl found 
here what he felt to be the most impressive argument for the exist- 
ence of God. At the same time, he came to feel that all theoretic 
proofs are inadequate, and stated that the acceptance of the idea 
of God is, as Kant declared, a practical belief, and not an act of 
theoretic knowledge. Herrmann, likewise, goes back to Kant, when 
he declares that the Christian idea of God is but a function of the 
moral spirit, which seeks and experiences in it a freedom from guilt 
and evil. 2 

But Herrmann's second objective basis of certainty demands the 
mediation of the first, the historical Jesus. In him we meet with 
a fact which makes us able to justify at the bar of reason and con- 
science our conviction that we are in communion with God. We 
might be aware, even apart from Christ, of our dependence upon 
an infinite Power, but we could never reach certainty that this 
Power is the Will of the gracious God. Jesus so interprets to us 
the love of God that he turns our rebellion and despair into humility 
and consolation.* 



1 Mozley, Ritschlianism, p. 110. 
2 Metaphysik der Theologie, p. 17. 
•Communion with God, pp. 277, 289. 



60 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 61 

Kaftan does not separate the sphere of Christian thought so 
widely from that of rational knowledge. 1 At the same time, he 
holds that it is only by looking at the practical side that we can 
discover what is real, and in some sense objective. 2 The genius 
of Kant is revealed in his going back to the idea of the chief good ; 
that idea alone is fitted to serve as the basis of a practical philosophy. 
The chief good must secure perfect satisfaction for the soul ; but 
there is no such chief good in the world. (Truth of the Christian 
Religion, II, 328, 329.) The Christian idea of the Kingdom of God 
is the rational idea of the chief good, a postulate of reason (pp. 
378-380). This expression postulate of reason is borrowed from 
Kant, who described the existence of God and the immortality of 
the human soul as postulates of practical reason. But the distinc- 
tion between theoretical and practical reason is not to be retained, 
because reason is always practical in one aspect of it. Starting from 
knowledge determined by the interposition of reason, the way to 
the highest knowledge must be sought. At the same time, a funda- 
mental leaning upon Kant is acknowledged (p. 381). 

But Kant does not go beyond the postulate as such. If we are 
not to stop there, says Kaftan, the eternal Kingdom of God must 
have been made known in history, by a divine revelation (pp. 381, 
382). Thus it comes about that the postulate of a supermundane 
Kingdom of God at the goal of human history is simply the postulate 
of a special revelation of that Kingdom in history. Thus reason 
and revelation meet in the conception of the chief good (p. 386). 
But a theory of knowledge alone can take us no farther than the 
human, finite, relative : only an idealistic philosophy which finds the 
key to the world's interpretation in the spiritual content of life can 
here avail ; and it will lead us to God by the path of moral activity. 
Even so, man can realize the ethical ideal and hold fast the theo- 
retical faith in God only by means of the faith reposed in the Chris- 
tian revelation (p. 422 f). Thus Kaftan's somewhat more elaborate 
theory of knowledge finds supplementation in revelation, somewhat 
as Herrmann's did. And the sort of knowledge at which one arrives 
is practical religious knowledge, not theoretical scientific knowledge. 

The Modern Positive theologian takes a somewhat different course. 
Seeberg admits that the idea of God as innate is as great a figment 

1 Ci. Truth of the Christian Religion, p. 11. 
2 Ut supra, p. 176. 

61 



62 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

as, for example, that of innate right (Fundamental Truths, p. 4). 
At the same time, the thought of God is universal; man cannot 
have produced it, nor can he have arrived at it by the process of 
induction; it is given him from without (p. 10). All judgments 
as to the objective are, however, subjectively based; the content is 
from without, the cognition from v/ithin. The content is made up 
of conceptions and perceptions which belong to history; God has 
revealed himself historically (p. 69). Only he who already has the 
thought of God understands the language of nature in a religious 
sense. A knowledge of God presupposes a revelation ; God's doings 
are his revelation (p. 138). At Christianity's beginning, the deeds 
and words by which God became manifest, entered into history in 
Jesus Christ, and live on in the church. But heaven was not rent 
asunder, nor does a supernatural nature stream by holy magic into 
us. Nothing happens in the soul which is not through the soul 
(p. 292). 

Forsyth does not take so much time showing that his supernat- 
uralism is perfectly natural. He frankly says that there is a knowl- 
edge by faith which is as sound of its kind as is the knowledge by 
experience, by science, and it is much superior and more momentous. 
The preacher must be sure of a kind of knowledge which creates 
experience; his message reports a world beyond experience. 1 In 
these positions Forsyth displays diverse tendencies; he is strongly 
influenced by the Ritschlian differentiation between religious and 
scientific knowledge. On the other hand, he is too much interested 
in the realm beyond experience, believing as he does that the preacher 
must dogmatize about the whole of it, to follow out the Ritschlian 
suggestion. 2 His great divergence from the Ritschlian position is 
in relation to the content of revelation; here he discovers a con- 
siderable body of truths. This is in spite of the fact that he main- 
tains the necessity of recognizing the distinction between theoretical 
and practical knowledge, and of falling in with the modern stress 
upon the latter.* 

With Beth we discover, as has already been pointed out, the 
Ritschlian distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge. 
That sort of knowledge which experience yields us, that is to say, 
our religious experience, is not capable of any scientific or theo- 

1 Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, p. 200 f. 
2 Ut supra, p. 200. 
•Ut supra, p. 204. 

62 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 63 

retical validation, indeed does not need any such validation. At the 
same time, Beth holds to the necessity of recognizing theoretic or 
scientific knowledge in theology; that sort of knowledge, the kind 
of which apologetic makes use, must ground itself in the modern 
world-view and validate itself to the modern mind. However, as- 
surance rests upon religious knowledge, that is, the personal con- 
viction which faith engenders in experience can be gained in no 
other way. Religious knowledge is conditioned simply in this prac- 
tical way : it completes itself in a process which acknowledges the 
primacy of the practical reason. 1 

When we pass to the sphere of theoretical knowledge, where scien- 
tific theology must ground itself, we discover Beth's position to be 
that a criticism of experience yields us ultimate reality, that we 
know real objects, we know God ; a position akin to that of Troeltsch. 

Troeltsch says that the most such an inquiry into the validity of 
religious ideas as is proposed by the theory of religious knowledge 
can yield is testimony to an a priori law of the formation of relig- 
ious ideas. That law lies in the nature of reason ; and the religious 
Apriori stands in organic relation to the other Aprioris of reason. 
The existence of such a religious Apriori does not immediately 
guarantee the existence of the religious Object as such, however. 
It validates only the actual content of consciousness, and offers no 
basis for existential judgments. 2 

Very important is the question concerning the origin and content 
of the religious Apriori. In the nature of reason, all values are 
referred to an absolute Substance as source and norm. 3 Among the 
other Aprioris the ethical appears next after the religious, and the 
logical and aesthetic follow it closely. Consequently, if the relig- 
ious Apriori harmonizes with the ethical, logical, and aesthetic, we 
gain a further criterion of its validity. 

Die Giiltigkeit einer religiosen Idee kann groszer oder geringer sein, je 
nachdem sie die Harmonie des Bewusztseins sich einfiigt oder etwa gar die 
Fiihring in dieser Harmonizierung iibernimmt. So ergibt sich von hier aus 
auch eine innere Beweglichkeit des Gultigkeitskriteriums, das dem verschie- 
denen Masz von Giiltigkeit verschiedener Religions formen gerecht werden 
kann. 4 

1 B€th, Die Moderne u. s. w., p. 257. 
2 Kultur der Gegenwart, II, p. 485. 
s Ut supra, II, p. 486. 
4 Ut supra, II, p. 486. 

63 



64 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

The religious Apriori is the idea of God. In another connection, 
Troeltsch says that the idea of God is not gained from Jesus, nor 
is it attained through deductive metaphysics ; it yields itself with 
the metaphysical Aposterioris which arise from the revision and 
unifying of experience into final notions (letzten Begriffen). At 
the same time, the religious value of the God-idea is realized for us 
through Jesus. 1 A metaphysics of religion Troeltsch regard's as 
indispensable. 

Eine streng erkenntnistheoretisch-angelegte Philosophic wird, wenn sie nicht 
in Psychologismus und Skepsis stecken bleiben will, in ihren Begriffen der 
Gultigkeit und der "Vernunft iiberhaupt" immer die Ansatze zu einer solchen 
Mataphysik enthalten, bei der nur die Frage ist, wie weit sie fiihren kann. 2 

It is not enough to reach the God-idea by the road of religious 
faith ; it must be grounded in the reality of a transcendent world- 
Reason in which the values of the spiritual life of man find their 
common anchorage. 3 

For Conservative Orthodoxy, Ritschlianism, and Modern Pos- 
itivism, in one way or another, the God-idea is confirmed and vali- 
dated by revelation. However far the postulates of the practical 
reason, or of reason in general — whether theoretical or practical — 
may carry us, the God whom we know is made known to us through 
revelation. To be sure, what we gain is, on the one hand, held to 
be a body of truths about God, while on the other it is the personal 
attitude and impress of God himself which revelation yields ; in 
either case, however, revelation is indispensable. The Religions- 
geschichtliche group make no such fundamental and constructive 
use of the concept of revelation. Indeed, as we shall see, revela- 
tion in the only sense in which they recognize it at all is quite another 
thing than the conventional. 

2. The Conception of Science and Reality. 

Conservative Orthodoxy has a sense of the perils involved in any 
thorough-going acceptance of the scientific-developmental view, and 
usually insists upon rejecting the hypothesis of genetic continuity 
with which science works, or upon some modification such as totally 
remakes the hypothesis. Dr. Orr very frankly says : 

It need not further be denied that between this view of the world involved 
in Christianity, and what is sometimes termed the "modern view of the world," 
there exists a deep and radical antagonism. . . . The phrase ("modern 

1 Absolutheit des Christentums, p. xiv. 

2 Kultur der Gegenwart, II, p. 487. 

8 Cf. Diehl, Zeitsdhrifit fur T, u. K., 1908, p. 474 f. 

64 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 65 

world-view") points to a homogeneity of these various modern systems 
. . . their refusal to recognize anything in nature, life or history, outside 
the lines of natural development. 1 

His Note D on Lecture I of the above series makes the scope of 
the scientific claim coextensive with the aspiration of Mr. Spencer's 
Synthetic Philosophy. Science is somewhat darkly pictured in the 
terms of Mr. Huxley as engaged in "the extension of the province 
of what we call matter and causation, and the concomitant banish- 
ment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and 
spontaneity." 2 If one take this view, instead of holding that science 
is engaged in a progressive comprehension of reality and the con- 
comitant elaboration of a technique by means of which the highest 
human values may be achieved and conserved, then the picture may 
well seem dark. 

The view of reality to which the ordinary Conservative Orthodox 
view of science above indicated is related is a plain dualism, the 
belief in two realms of existence — the natural and the supernatural 
— over against each other and impinging upon each other. The 
issue between the conservative and the liberal camps is, in another 
definition of it, just that of the supernatural. 

The question is not about isolated miracles, but about the whole concep- 
tion of Christianity — what it is, and whether the supernatural does not enter 
into the very essence of it? It is the general question of a supernatural or 
non-supernatural conception of the universe. 8 

To the Ritschlian, especially one of Herrmann's type, science and 
religion exist side by side as separate realms of knowledge. Religion 
is the personal and individual method of ordering and interpreting 
reality ; science deals with the realm of demonstrable and universally 
valid knowledge. Both of these branches of human thought, 

the normative and peculiar life of selfhood, the demonstrable and experi- 
encable reality, one must hold valid as the two interlaced and yet widely 
distinguishable forms of our thought. They are the revelations to us of a 
hidden whole. 4 

In keeping with this view, Herrmann holds that nature is not inde- 
pendent of the directing and even altering Divine hand. 

Essential to this view of the separate provinces of religion and 
science is a dualism very like that which underlies the Conservative 
Orthodoxy. Herrmann argues for it that while the ardor of the 

1 Christian View, p. 10. 

a Ut supra, p. 167. 

3 Ut supra, p. 11. 

♦Zeitschr. fur T. u. K., 1907, p. 197 f. 

65 



66 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

scientist may impel him to try to circumscribe by his method all that 
he conceives as reality, yet that realm of reality mocks at his ardor. 
The world in which we actually live is quite another from that 
which the scientists shape with their concepts. 1 

Kaftan says that science aims at the extension and correction of 
our common knowledge ; but that its explanation of reality does not 
carry us beyond the knowledge of what is actually given, and does 
not give us the "why" and the "wherefore" at all. Even the laws 
themselves are nothing but an expression for the actual organiza- 
tion of our knowledge given us by scientific technique. 2 We look 
in totally different quarters when engaged with the real world ex- 
tending in space and time, and when asking the cause and purpose 
of the world. 3 Thus religion has a peculiar province of its own: 
the meaning and value side of reality. But religion can never per- 
form this function without the aid of revelation. There is a super- 
mundane Kingdom of God, and a special revelation of that King- 
dom in history. 4 

The Modern Positive group endeavors to meet the demand of 
science somewhat variously. Seeberg holds that the religious-his- 
torical development is not purely immanent, but is conditioned by 
transcendent factors. He holds that the naturalism of the evolution 
theory will never satisfy the human soul. 5 He speaks of "the iron 
laws of the evolution of the world" as over against the free develop- 
ment of the human spirit. The order of nature does not, however, 
stand opposed to man as an enemy ; it represents simply "the columns 
and chains which His power builds in the world." There is no 
motion of nature nor movement of the human soul which God does 
not work. The Christian religion changes the mechanical causal 
order into a spiritual causal order, or dependence upon nature to 
dependence upon God. 6 At the same time, nothing willed or accom- 
plished by God in human history is unnatural, since God himself 
created human nature as the organ of his will. 7 

From Seeberg's point of view, Christian theology is not to be 
isolated from the rest of our knowledge; it must be articulated 
with the rest of our scientific and objective knowledge. Forsyth 

1 Ut supra. 

2 Truth of the Christian Religion, pp. 72, 114. 

8 Ut supra, p. 150. 

*Ut supra, p. 395. 

5 Fundamental Truths, p. 63. 

6 Ut supra, p. 165. 

7 Ut supra, p. 267. 

66 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 67 

is more conservative than Seeberg, and — while holding that Jesus 
was "grafted into the great psychology of the race" — objects to the 
modern theory of evolution, and to the liberal theology which is 
interested in cosmology and not in redemption. 1 He explains that 
he has no quarrel with evolution until, from being a method, it is 
treated as vera causa, serving to explain not simply the mode of 
change, but the principle of change. Evolution must escape from 
its bondage to the physical sciences and its mesalliance with monistic 
dogma, and then it may well serve the ends of the Christian church. 
With both Seeberg and Forsyth there is the postulate of an ultimate 
dualism of world-view; and the endeavor to harmonize the claims 
of the Christian religion with the claims of modern thought has, at 
the hands of both, constant recourse to this postulate. But science 
receives rather short shrift at the hands of Forsyth; he is interested 
in the realities of another world. 

The interest which Beth has in science is not essentially different 
from that of Seeberg, the apologetic interest, the endeavor to justify 
Christianity in the eyes of the modern world. But Beth makes a 
rather more specific use of certain aspects of science, particularly 
the chemical and the biological, in order to show that the scientific 
theory of evolution is distinctly friendly to Christian supernatural- 
ism. This resembles a much more strenuous procedure of the same 
sort by Griitzmacher, which puts a construction upon science that 
the scientist could not accept, and alters the concept of revelation 
to such an extent that the only other school of theologians who 
make large use of it — the Conservative Orthodox — would not recog- 
nize it. Beth is not a mediator in any such sense, but in his use of 
science he is an apologist. 

A fundamentally different attitude toward science is assumed by 
the Religions geschichtliche school. There is no attempt to wrest 
the postulates of science into conformity with the demands or pre- 
suppositions of the Christian faith. It is proposed in earnest to 
proceed scientifically. The change in world-view which the progress 
of science has brought about is frankly acknowledged. History and 
the phenomenal order can afford us no absolutes ; it is impossible 
longer to take a single generation, or a single individual, as absolute 
norm, over against all time and all cycles of spiritual existence. The 
age of the anthropocentric and geocentric has passed. 2 In harmony 



1 Positive Preaching, p. 239. 

2 Die Wissenschaftliche Lage, p. 53 f. 



67 



68 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

with the unity of reality postulated by science, Christianity must be 
studied along with other religions by the aid of the science of Com- 
parative Religions. This science approaches the matter of the es- 
sence of religion by resolving the issue into four problems : psychol- 
ogy of religion, theory of religious knowledge, philosophy of relig- 
ious history, and the metaphysics of religion. Christianity must be 
submitted to the same tests which are imposed upon the religious 
phenomena of all other faiths, and must stand upon whatever merit 
the process reveals. The scientific study of religions, ending with 
a religious metaphysics, transforms the religious God-idea and brings 
it into harmony with the modern scientific world-view. 1 So much 
for the general view of Troeltsch. 

Bousset inclines somewhat to the Ritschlian distinction between 
science and religion as distinct provinces, limiting science to the 
physical and material universe. Religion, on the other hand, is con- 
cerned with the meaning and value side of existence. 2 Religious 
ideas are not scientific theorems, deducible and provable ; they are 
final truths. Science relies upon what can be measured, counted, 
weighed : 

letzte Wirklichkeit ist fur sie Substanz, das in Raum und Zeit Beharrende, 
der Geist kann vor ihrem Forum hochstens als Akzidenz erscheinen — Re- 
ligion geht auf letzte schopferische Ursachlichkeit der Freiheit, die Wissen- 
schaft laszt uns stecken in der endlosen Kette der Kausalitat. 8 

Bousset proposes to break with all historic supernaturalism. At 
the same time, religious ideas are even somewhat antagonistic to 
science, and they far surpass its province. 

Fiir den, der Wissenschaft und Erkenntnis der Welt-Wirklichkeit in eins 
setzt, gilt Religion iiberhaupt nicht und kann nicht gelten. Vielmehr musz 
gegen den Versuch wissenschaftlicher Alleinherrschaft das Urvermogen und 
tieftste Empfinden unserer Gesamt- Vermin ft zu Hilfe gerufen werden, vor 
deren Forum dann die wissenshaftliche Weltanschauung ihrer Beschrankt- 
heit und Bedingtheit erscheint* 

There is thus a wide range of view in the handling of the concep- 
tions of science and reality by the four groups of theologians under 
review. Conservative Orthodoxy and the Ritschlians quite generally 
hold a rather rigid conventional notion of science, are inclined to 
attribute to it a somewhat mechanical notion of law ; the Ritschlians 
of Herrmann's type yield it in addition the function of producing 

"Cfc Troeltsch, Kultur der Gegenwart, II, p. 461 f. 
2 Funfter Welkongress : Protokoll, p. 300. 
3 Ut supra, p. 301. 
*Ut supra, p. 301. 

68 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 69 

demonstrable knowledge. The Modern Positives seize upon the 
main postulate of science — that of continuous process — and seek 
either to effect a harmony of science with religion through a modi- 
fication of that postulate, or to show that upon certain terms it is 
possible to live with the idea and at the same time retain the notion 
of a revealed religion. The school of Comparative Religions means 
to take science as just what it is, to make earnest with its claims 
upon religion, and to secure thereby a reading of the fundamental 
religious phenomena native to the human race which shall be truly 
scientific. These men have come closer than the representatives 
of any other group to the modern conception of science as a tech- 
nique for the mastery of reality and not a mere apparatus for know- 
ing ; as a method which proceeds by the use of postulates, but which 
knows nothing whatever about "iron laws." However, this is not 
quite the notion of Troeltsch even, though he makes the nearest 
approach to it. 

The general conception of reality held by these four groups is 
dualistic; there is another world of the permanent and perfect over 
against this transient finite world. All but the Comparative Relig- 
ionists are willing to call it the supernatural ; they are not, they will 
not admit Jesus to it ; but God dwells there, thus making it the goal 
of our hope. It is that from which and unto which the process 
proceeds — the realm of the Absolute. 

3. The Idea of History. 

It will not be necessary to dwell at length upon the idea of history 
cherished by Conservative Orthodoxy. There is a divine plan of 
the world, and history is merely the unfolding of that plan. That 
plan provides for a natural unfoldment and for supernatural inter- 
ventions at crucial points — interventions which lift life to a higher 
plane and eventually alter the whole course of history. God chose 
to create a universe into which it was seen that sin would enter; 
the Incarnation was a part of that plan, indeed the very pivot of it ; 
"creation itself is built upon redemption lines." 1 This is the con- 
ventional view. 

The Ritschlian idea of history and its function is wholly different. 
It is only out of life in history that God can come to us, Herrmann 
declares. Just in proportion as the essential elements in our his- 

^rr, Christian View, p. 323. 



70 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

torical environment become elements in our consciousness are we 
led into the presence of those facts which reveal God to us. 1 Now 
Jesus is the historical fact by which God communes with us. The 
question how a tradition subject to historical criticism can yield any 
certain content is dealt with by asserting that those elements which 
abide are just the more general features of Jesus' life which all hold 
to be correct. This portrait is a part of the historical reality amid 
which we live, and this makes us independent of the authority of 
the chroniclers. 2 Repose upon the work of the historian is a false 
repose. All are willing to* admit that Jesus really appeared in the 
world in which we live. This historical fact of the person of Jesus, 
mediated to us by the Christian community, is the great basis of 
our Christian certainty. 8 It is quite apparent that this view is tied 
up very intimately with history. If the historicity of Jesus were 
disproven, Ritschlianism would lose its platform, its basis of assur- 
ance. Conservative Orthodoxy on principle sets limits to the prov- 
ince of historical criticism, Ritschlianism does not profess to do so, 
but as a matter of fact must if it would tie us up to history as exclu- 
sively as Herrmann does. Harnack sees the point, and asks the 
question whether it is possible to pick out a single phenomenon and 
saddle it with the whole weight of eternity, especially when that 
phenomenon is past. 4 But in his answer he shows much the same 
view of things manifested by Herrmann, declaring that in history 
we have received all that we possess. Even though all history is a 
record of development, it does not have to be understood as a proc- 
ess of mechanical change; personality brings about development, 
great personalities in particular. The fact of Jesus lies open to the 
light of day upon the page of history, and it requires that he be 
honored as unique. 5 He stands at the end of the series of messen- 
gers and prophets ; all live on him and through him. But alas for 
us if our faith were based upon a number of details established by 
the historian; no historian has ever attained such a goal. At the 
same time, the spiritual purport of the life of Jesus is an historical 
fact, and it has reality in the effect which it produces ; this is the 
link which binds us to Jesus. 6 

1 Communion with' God, p. 65. 

2 Ut supra, p. 70. 

3 Ut supra, p. 102. 

4 Christianity and History, p. 18. 

°Ut supra, pp. 37, 38. 

•Ut supra, pp. 60-62. 

70 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 71 

When we pass to the Modern Positive view, we find a large em- 
phasis upon the historical, due in part to the Ritschlian influence. 
Seeberg says that God has revealed himself historically in words 
and actions ; and that even today we experience him thus. Yet 
Christ does not speak to us today in other or new terms as opposed 
to his revelation. 1 It will not do to hold that the whole historical 
evolution of mankind affords deeper insight into the nature of God 
than is afforded by the one human life of Jesus. For the God-will 
that guides human history to a redemptive goal entered into history 
in Jesus, and in his words and deeds worked after the method of 
history. 2 When we become Christians, a historical form arose 
before our souls, and from it there came to us the power of a per- 
sonal life, an almighty Will which subdued us. Jesus alone, among 
all the figures of life, constrains us to faith and love. 31 

Forsyth is less mediating in his statements. He declares plainly 
that Jesus is an insert into history. To be sure, he comes before 
us through the medium of the Christian community ; but redemption 
is not evolution, nor is the Kingdom of God mere spiritual progress. 
We have a superlogical revelation in Christ's historic person. 4 A 
theology which places us in a spiritual process, a native movement 
between the finite and the infinite, depreciates the value of the spir- 
itual act, and makes us independent of the grace of God. 5 But this 
is not to be thought of. The course of religion is not an immanent 
evolution. Mere process ends in mechanism; that real unfolding — 
which is an infinite concursus — demands a focusing in an act to 
constitute actual revelation ; for such a power cannot adequately 
reveal itself dispersed through history. 6 

Beth would join the Ritschlian movement for independence from 
the dicta of mere historical inquiry concerning the person of Jesus. 
Faith cannot base itself upon any great historical figure whatever 
which historical inquiry can pass judgment upon. 7 What insignifi- 
cance, then, can Jesus have for our present-day faith ? The question 
can never be answered by a reference to all the possible features of 
Jesus, but only through maintaining the image of the New Testa- 
ment Jesus. This is the Jesus who has actually wrought in Chris- 

iTruths of the Christian Religion, p. 100. 

2 Ut supra, p. 222. 

3 Ut supra, p. 241. 

4 Positive Preaching, p. 122'. 

5 Ut supra, p. 214. 

6 Ut supra, p. 235. 

'Theol. Rundschau, 1912, p. 9. 

71 



72 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

tianity. Now if Jesus never lived, all relation of faith to him is 
impossible; we can use neither the "symbolic Christ" nor the "his- 
torical Jesus." These great ideas stand or fall with the historicity 
of Jesus. It would be all over, not only for orthodox Christianity, 
but with liberal Christianity — as Christianity — if Jesus never lived. 1 

The Religionsgeschichtliche theologians have a very definite view 
of history. Its enormous extent leads them to conclude the impos- 
sibility of making any cross-section normative. There may exist 
besides Christianity many other religious connections with their 
own prototypes and redeemers ; in some milleniums to come new 
and great forms of religion may arise. This would leave Jesus a 
relative function as center of the European-Christian world. But 
truth for other spheres and ages would not be bound up with the 
person of Jesus, although for us it is so related. 2 

This brings us to the question of the historical Jesus. Troeltsch 
recognizes the difficulty of the inquiry, but he believes that it will 
make progress, and that when the dust has cleared away, the old 
portrait of Jesus will so far remain that he will continue the source 
and power of Christianity. This will be the case, even if the his- 
torian cease to describe him as the absolutely central personality, 
the opening of a new stage of humanity, or as sinless and relig- 
iously complete.* 

Bousset also recognizes the difficulty of the historical question, 
and asks whether we are willing to base our religious certainty upon 
the instability of it. The belief of the Conservative Orthodox view, 
as he points out, stands or falls with the reality of the God-Man, 
Jesus. But the historical view, he maintains, is one-sided and im- 
possible. Historicism is always confronted by the unsolvable prob- 
lem: What are the essential elements in the portrait of Jesus; was 
Jesus an eschatologist or not? Doubtless there is much of eternal 
value in the teaching of Jesus, but historical science lacks the meas- 
ure and the means of pointing out these elements with any convinc- 
ing power. One might, then, abandon the attempt at a detailed por- 
trait, and keep in mind the personal impulse which went out from 
Jesus and lives in the Christian community ; but that is to abandon 
the historical attempt. Another way would be to take the whole 
movement of history as a progressive unity of revelation, eulminat- 

1 Ut supra, p. 19 f. 

2 Funfter Weltkongress : Protokoll, p. 339 f. 

•Zeitschr. fur wissenschaftl. Theol., Vol. 51, p. 123. 

72 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 73 

ing in the individual; but, even so, the historical investigation of 
the life of that individual — Jesus — leads to uncertainty. The out- 
come of it is that history points beyond itself to another founda- 
tion for certainty. That foundation is reason; the religious con- 
sciousness must attain clearness concerning itself. It does not need 
the authority of history, but is itself a standard by which we meas- 
ure mere historical events, and so also the eternal elements in Jesus 
of Nazareth. 1 As a matter of fact, we have and hold our faith in 
God in the spiritual communion created by Jesus ; He stands tower- 
ing high above all other teachers favored by God, as every eye can 
see. 2 

Very briefly summarized, the Ritschlian view bases assurance 
fundamentally upon history, but upon history which centers in an 
ineffable activity of God in the person of Jesus ; Modern Positivism 
and Conservative Orthodoxy rest fundamentally upon revelation, 
which, however interpreted, is an insert into the natural unfoldment 
of events ; while the Religionsgeschichtliche view is grounded in the 
adequacy of human reason for the interpretation of the divine mean- 
ing in history and personal life. 

4. Revelation and the Supernatural. 

The discussion of this topic has necessarily been anticipated in 
part in the preceding sections. In consequence it need not occupy 
us long in this connection. With the Conservative Orthodox rev- 
elation is found in nature, in history — especially that of Israel — 
in predictive prophecy, in miracle as the intervention of God, but 
supremely in the Incarnation of the Son of God from heaven, who 
alone can work redemption — the final end of all revelation. The 
record of this series of special manifestations is also revelation, 
being the work of inspired men, and affords a system of divine 
truth not otherwise attainable. This system of truths conferred by 
divine revelation is fundamental with Conservative Orthodoxy. 

Ritschlianism of Herrmann's type finds a positive vision of God in 
the historical Jesus, through whom God seeks communion with us. 
This revelation is not to be identified with any content of doctrines. 
We value the human elements of Jesus according to this view; yet 
Jesus is unique — unique in achievement of his ideal and in his 
consciousness of being humanity's sole Redeemer. In a word, how- 

1 Funfter Weltkongress : Protokoll, o. 295 f. 
2 Faith of a Modern Protestant, p. 118 f. 

73 



74 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

ever human we find Jesus, we cannot avoid the impression that in 
him God is speaking to us. This revelation is a special divine 
activity, limited in time, positive, sufficient, final; and it is mediated 
to us through the Bible and the Christian community. 1 Kaftan 
likewise views the revelation of God in Christ as an interposition 
of God in human history. 2 He argues at great length in his Truth 
of the Christian Religion to show that the Christian idea of revela- 
tion is perfectly rational; reason and revelation meet in the same 
conception of the chief good. Both Herrmann and Kaftan distin- 
guish the Scriptures from the revelation enclosed therein. Neither 
their narratives nor their doctrines are to be unquestionably ac- 
cepted as true ; the revelation is Jesus Christ, and the Scriptures are 
simply an intermediary between him and the faith of later genera- 
tions. 8 

To the Modern Positive theologians revelation is by action rather 
than in any sum of revealed truths. Yet the Modern Positive feels 
the need of maintaining certain truths which are certified in the 
revelation, such truths as the supernatural origin and resurrection 
of Jesus, his deity and atoning death. These are considered essen- 
tial by Forsyth, and, as a matter of fact, by Seeberg and Beth as 
well. With Seeberg, Christ is God's action, or God in action; He 
is thus the revelation. Forsyth singles out the Cross as focusing 
the redemptive function of Christ ; redemption is revelation, and 
revelation is redemption. Seeberg states the matter of atonement 
in other terms — as the culmination of a redemptive career. Both 
Seeberg and Forsyth believe in miracle, but neither makes a con- 
structive use of it. 4 Seeberg declares Christ both God and man. 
Forsyth sees in him God the Son, a superlogical revelation. 8 

Both Forsyth and Seeberg distinguish the revelation from the 
Bible. Forsyth says: 

The word of God is the Gospel which is in the Bible, but it is not identical 
with the Bible. . . . Revelation's compass is very small, smaller than the 
Bible; simply the message of the Christ living on earth, dying, risen, and 
living in glory, and all for God's glory in our reconciliation. 6 
In somewhat similar fashion, Seeberg declares that "Jesus Christ 
is the content of Scripture." 7 Yet, with both, God's doings are his 

l Moz 1 ey, Ritschlianism, Chap. iv. 

2 Truth of the Christian Religion, I. p. 96. 

"Kaftan, Das Wesen der christl. Religion, p. 437. 

4 Fundamental Truths, p. 230. 

6 Positive Preaching, p. 213. 

"Revelation and the Bible, Hibbert Journal, October, 1911. 

'Fundamental Truths, p. 113; cf. also Beth, Die Moderne u. s. w., p. 199 f. 

74 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 75 

revelation. Doctrine is not given directly in the revelation, but 
arises when the revelation is made an object of reflection; doc- 
trines are not the revelation, but follow it as a consequence. God's 
deeds are his revelation. 1 Christ is God's working, God's action. 
Under the stress of the Ritschlian insistence, both Forsyth and 
Seeberg hold that revelation yields immediately no content of doc- 
trines ; yet they both feel the conservative pressure for a specific 
interpretation of the facts, and are thus led to the immediate se- 
quence of doctrine upon revelation — yielding it a far greater con- 
sequence that the Ritschlians do. What we finally have is a number 
of cardinal doctrines which make clear the content of the divine 
revelation; and to this content of truth, faith is fundamentally 
related. These doctrines must be adapted to the current world- 
view. 2 It is just this nucleus of cardinal truths in which Beth is 
really interested, and he endeavors to show that the scientific pos- 
tulate of evolution actually opens the door for revelation. 

The school of Comparative Religions really makes no use of the 
conventional conception of revelation. Troeltsch, to be sure, does 
not deny the ineffable in our experience of reality, and he does in 
a way relate Jesus to that ineffable. 

The fact of such a union of human life with the certainty of the Divine 
is, like all naive experience, a final and insoluble element of reality, a mystery 
like the mystery of all that is real. Thus the personality of Jesus belongs to 
the great basal mysteries of reality. For him who bows before the God of 
Jesus, it is the greatest. 8 

When Troeltsch uses the term revelation, it is with a different 
connotation than that which conventionally attaches to the term. 
Revelation, in his sense, is a product of the religious imagination. 
Even so, Jesus is for us the high-water mark of spiritual attain- 
ment, the embodiment of transcendent religious power. Though 
not in a different category from other religious geniuses, he is, for 
us, the divine revelation, reinforced by the historical process of 
the centuries. From the fact that we are in the circle of light that 
streams from him, we see in him a revelation of God; for us he is 
in some sense Redeemer. 4 

One confesses that such expressions are elusive and unsatisfac- 
tory. The fact which they bring to light is that Jesus is not an 

1 Ut supra, pp. 138, 139. 

2 Ut supra, p. 281. 

8 Absolutheit des Christentums, p. 113. 

♦Funfter Weltkongress. Protokoll, p. 337 f. 

75 



76 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

absolute for Troeltsch, even though exalted very much above the 
rank and file of us. Only religious mysticism, and that always 
defies analysis, may find in Jesus a revelation of God. 

Bousset has the same sense of the ineffable in religious experi- 
ence. He declares that our faith credits God with knowing a thou- 
sand ways and means, within the limits of the given laws, of ap- 
proaching the individual and surrounding him with goodness and 
care. 1 And he even admits that a new and vital element came into 
the world with the advent of the Gospel. 2 Jesus brought a stream 
of certainty concerning the forgiveness of sins into the world. He 
towers high above the other religious teachers favored of God, as 
the one who reveals the Divine light with inward certainty. 8 What- 
ever matter of revelation he may have made, it is — in the view of 
Bousset and Troeltsch — only common religious truth passed through 
the alembic of a superior personality; it is no disclosure made by 
one in whom God dwells uniquely because he is different in kind 
from us, much less is it an impartation of objective theological 
truths. 

Coordinated with the issue of revelation is the question of the 
supernatural. In the view of Conservative Orthodoxy, the temporal 
and eternal stand over against each other, two distinct orders; and 
the eternal now and again inserts into the temporal fresh quantities 
of energy, new forms of existence, unique modes of operation, which 
— though they may be in harmony with the "law" of the higher 
realm, the supernatural — nevertheless constitute a break with the 
natural order, and introduce results which it could never have pro- 
duced. Revelation is only a single aspect of this intervening activ- 
ity of a world otherwise beyond experience. The whole series of 
theophanies and impartations, of miracles and inspirations, falls into 
this general setting. 

The number of such elements which one system or another ac- 
knowledges varies greatly. Conservative Orthodoxy finds no barrier 
to and large need for a great number of them. In the ancient world, 
within the special area of revelation, such happenings were not 
infrequent; they include divinely-guided history, prophetic inspira- 
tion, theophany, miracle, the whole series of events which consti- 
tuted the life of Jesus a unique phenomenon — especially the super- 



1 Faith of a Modern Protestant, p. 58. 
2 Ut supra, p. 81. 
«Ut supra, p. 118. 



76 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 77 

natural conception and the resurrection — the peculiar enduements 
of the Spirit, and the ancient and modern psychological miracle 
of regeneration. To this list one might add marvelous answer 
to prayer — an experience not quite so generally insisted upon as 
regeneration. 

Ritschlianism contents itself with one, or at least two, of the 
series as constructive elements in its system. To be sure, miracle 
is recognized. Herrmann makes the very existence of such a tradi- 
tion as that Jesus was ideal and perfect a miraculous fact, seeing 
that it is reported by men who did not have that ideal experience 
in their own lives. 1 Only a miraculous transformation can bring 
us to the experience of the sovereignty of God. 2 There is a unity 
of Christ with God which is not describable in human categories.* 
The miracles which appear in the evangelic record serve no real 
apologetic purpose with the Christian man of today, though a con- 
viction of their historicity may be held without real detriment to 
faith. 4 Miracle is used in a new sense, and yet to express an activ- 
ity and results which are uniquely due to the divine operation. It 
is, however, experienced miracle, not recorded miracle, in which 
Herrmann believes. 5 When one has experienced the inward miracle, 
he knows that Christ transcends the natural order, and he need not 
then doubt the miracles of the Bible. But the Biblical miracles are 
no way of approach to Christ. Herrmann's is the most extensive 
Ritschlian handling of the conception of miracle, which has for the 
Ritschlians generally no constructive significance. Even Herrmann 
has nothing to affirm concerning particular miracles, if the 
resurrection of Jesus be made an exception. 8 

Among those who define themselves as Modern Positivists, For- 
syth is the most outspoken in his affirmation of the supernatural. 
Men's natural resources are so inadequate that they need not only 
aid from the supernatural, they need a Savior (Positive Preaching, 
p. 5) ; the saving act of God is an invasion of us, however inward 
(p. 63) ; the note of the church's message is the note of the super- 
natural (p. 122) ; the preacher's burthen is a world beyond experi- 
ence (p. 200) ; he preaches a real rescue by a hand from heaven 

'Communion with God, p. 91. 

*Ut supra, p. 96. 

3 Ut supra, p. 180. 

«Ut supra, pp. 233-235. 

•Der Christ und das Wunder, p. 69. 

•Cf. Die Religion im Verhaltniss z. Welterkennen, p. 386. 

77 



78 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

(p. 218) ; Christ overrode natural law (p. 223). x There are two 
culminating points in the series of supernatural communications : 
the one is God's final redemption of us by a permanently superhis- 
torical act in the historical Christ, 2 the other is the advent of our 
personal faith, which is "the uprising in us of a totally new world." 8 
Forsyth is really favorable to the acceptance of the whole series of 
supernatural phenomena which the Gospels report as accompanying 
the career and ministry of Jesus, and he lays great stress upon com- 
munion with the risen Christ ; he is not simply known in experience, 
but as the creator of experience. 4 

Seeberg is less outspoken, or perhaps one might say less conven- 
tional. He is much concerned to temper the aspect of "invasion" 
and to put his view into terms which shall make it scientifically 
acceptable. Faith has nothing to do with isolated miraculous events 
(Fundamental Truths, p. 78) ; nevertheless faith is always faith in 
the marvelous (p. 83) ; thus faith is the first miracle to be dealt with 
in the miracle problem (p. 100) ; God's doings are His revelation 
(p. 138) ; they appear in the course of human history, but with such 
force as to carry the immediate conviction that they are divine ; God 
is in fact directing the whole course of history toward the goal of 
redemption (p. 150). God effects all; and yet somehow it becomes 
operative only through ourselves (p. 168). Jesus was the conscious 
servant of God and Lord of the World (pp. 205, 207). He had a 
unique soul, a peculiar mode of perception, thought, and speech 
(p. 281 f). In fact, in Him the God-will that guides human history 
to redemption's goal entered human history and worked after the 
manner of history in His words and deeds (p. 222). We pray to 
Christ and have communion with Him (pp. 245, 246). Yet there 
is nothing in the whole revelation-redemption series which is not 
according to nature (p. 267). 

Here we have a good example of the real Modern Positive method 
of mediation. Beth goes about it in even more thorough-going fash- 
ion, yet to the same intent. The view is at bottom supernatural- 
istic, and the end of the mediating process is to gain a hearing for 
the gospel. Forsyth says that the true way is not to start with a 

*Cf. also p. 289. 

2 Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1911 : Revelation and the Bible. 

8 Positive Preaching, p. 35. 

*Ut supra, p. 68. 

78 



RECENT" PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 79 

world-view, but to begin with revelation, which is autonomous, 
whatever the world-view to which it is related. 1 

Troeltsch and Bousset both have that dualism in which God is set 
over against the world, a dualism which, presumably, is at the basis 
of all non-monistic religious faith. But the general world-view is 
rather that of a single homogeneous universe the fringes of whose 
reality fall back into the ineffable, than of a dual universe of natural 
and supernatural mutually impinging and sometimes interpenetrating. 
Evolution is the universal principle ; knowledge comes concomitantly 
with development and the application of human reason, and not 
otherwise. Religion is an original endowment of human nature, not 
a donation from the other world. As Bousset says, in this view, 
"one will have to break with all historic supernaturalism." 2 Troeltsch 
holds fundamentally the same view ; and yet both feel that such a 
type of Christian mysticism as makes large use of symbol is not 
only justified, but is the only course actually open to the religious 
man. This is not to say that such a mysticism can afford him knowl- 
edge concerning God and the ineffable, for the only certainty which 
remains to him is not a supernatural certainty at all, but the cer- 
tainty of faith. 8 

C. Relation of These Conceptions to the Basis of Assurance. 

1. Theory of Knowledge. 

In this discussion, as in the previous section where the theory of 
knowledge expressed or implied by each particular point of view 
was discussed (see B 1 above), there is no attempt to maintain the 
technical distinction between epistemology or the theory of knowl- 
edge and metaphysics. The two are so interrelated, either by im- 
plication or expressly, that this is scarcely practicable. The theory 
of knowledge is related to metaphysics thus immediately in all the 
schools, unless an exception be made of the Religionsgeschichtliche 
handling, where it is sometimes — as in the case of Troeltsch — very 
definitely distinguished. 

The three other types of theology passed under review make no 
constructive use of a theory of knowledge. Ritschlianism, in the 
form set forth by Herrmann, will permit no alliance between theol- 
ogy and metaphysics — however close an alliance between theology 

1 Positive Preaching, p. 250. 

2 Funfter Weltkongress, p. 298. 

3 Troeltsch, Absolutheit d. Christentums, p. xiv. 

79 



80 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

and ethics may be insisted upon. Reality in Christianity and in 
metaphysics are for him two essentially different things; they can- 
not be mixed. 1 

Kaftan, on the other hand, regards the two fields of thought — 
that of Christian faith and that of rational knowledge of reality — 
as capable of combination. 2 But even Kaftan makes no thorough- 
going use of this view. The 'Value judgments" of Ritschlianism 
are distinguished from theoretical or existential judgments — though 
some later Ritschlians hold that value- judgments have to do with 
objective truth. Revelation in the historic Jesus is brought in by 
all types of Ritschlianism to supplement that which the moral intui- 
tion yields. The term judgment of value, which is falling into dis- 
use among Ritschlians, means simply to express a conviction, which 
Ritschlianism has by no means yielded, that "proof cannot mean in 
theology what it means in natural science, but that in theology 
knowledge must be a matter of personal conviction arising from 
individual experience." The path to certainty, then, can be no 
metaphysical highway, but the way of religious experience aroused 
by contact with the historical Jesus mediated through the Christian 
community. 3 

Conservative Orthodoxy forgets its theory of knowledge, or suf- 
fers it to be swallowed up, by its confidence in revelation. Whether 
the philosophy be intuitional or deductive, it cannot get us very far. 
The certainty of the truths of the Christian religion, which is essen- 
tial to Christianity, comes in through revelation and contact of the 
soul with the supernatural. Though a psychology of this knowledge 
process is more elaborated by Modern Positivism, its view is essen- 
tially one of the creation and supplementation of human knowledge 
by revelation. In all three types, Ritschlian, Conservative Orthodox, 
and Modern Positive, revelation brings up all arrears of essential 
knowledge, and — interpreted by experience — becomes the basis of 
religious assurance. 

The School of Comparative Religions, especially such a theo- 
logian as Troeltsch, makes earnest with a theory of knowledge and 
with a metaphysics. There can be no apologetic grounding of the 
Christian faith without the development of both a theory of knowl- 
edge and a metaphysics. A theory of knowledge will show us how 



1 Metaphysik in der Theologie, p. 21. 
2 Truth of the Christian Religion, p. 11. 
"Cf. Mozley, Ritschlianism, Chap. V. 



80 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 81 

the God-idea arises as the religious Apriori, itself in relation to the 
other Aprioris of reason. But this affords that Apriori no ontological 
basis ; and it must have, to meet the demands of religious faith, an 
ontological basis. This can be supplied only by an inductive meta- 
physics, a metaphysics a posteriori. The spiritual values are an- 
chored in the world-ground by such a process. This will be the 
method of religious apologetic; but it is not the route which the 
ordinary Christian will travel to gain his confidence of God. His 
confidence will come from contact, either mediate or immediate, 
with great revealing personalities, personalities which bring to light 
the religious and moral possibilities of the soul, and in whose light 
we see light. Bousset manifests the same confidence in natural 
reason to validate the content which religious faith gives to the 
God-idea. He holds, likewise, to the religious significance of great 
personalities. "Our faith in God is entirely based on personality ;" 
we gain it from the mighty ones into whose consciousness there 
flashed the certainty of God. 1 

2. Science and Reality. 

We trace a very similar course when we come to the relation of 
religious assurance to science and to the conception of reality. Con- 
servative Orthodoxy denies the authority of science to form postu- 
lates which shall determine religious interpretations. Conservative 
Orthodoxy challenges the fully developed form of the chief postu- 
late of modern science, the concept of evolution, of continuous pro- 
gressive change. Science is remanded to the cataloging business and 
denied the right to advance the larger and more ultimate interpre- 
tations of reality. Thus science is looked upon with suspicion to 
such an extent that it finds no place in the grounding of personal 
religious assurance. The supreme basis of assurance is, as we shall 
see, the direct gift of interposing divine grace. 

The Ritschlian view holds that man lives in another world than 
that which science shapes with its ideas. The two are different 
modes of comprehending reality, standing alongside each other. 
Consequently religion is free from science and wholly autonomous. 
The two somehow fit into a hidden whole ; but for the present they 
ought not to be mixed. 2 "The idea of a living God who through 
his revelation creates true life in man cannot be related to the uni- 

1 Faith of a Modern Protestant, p. 118. 
2 Herrmann, Zeitschr. f. T. u. K., 1907, p. 197 f. 

81 



82 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

versally valid thoughts of science." 1 Personal assurance does not 
base, at all, in this view, upon the scientific findings of any age. It 
is even more independent than in the view of Conservative Ortho- 
doxy, which undertakes to say what science ought to be, while this 
view leaves science to go on its way unimpeded. Religious certainty, 
to put it in a word, bases upon revelation in history. 

Modern Positivism of the Seeberg type is distinctly friendly to 
current world-views. The truths of the Christian religion must be 
harmonized therewith. This, however, is a big undertaking, and the 
result cannot be said to be satisfactory to those who look upon Chris- 
tianity as a sum of truths, or to those who understand what the 
modern scientific world-view is. The matter of mediation is clearly 
an apologetic procedure. The path to religious certainty is essen- 
tially the Ritschlian path of revelation in history. More is made 
of revelation, i. e., it has a broader scope. The kind of assurance 
is different; it is not mere assurance of a gracious God, it is also 
certainty of the truths of the Christian religion. Because the person 
of Jesus has so overwhelming an effect upon us, the truth of the 
Gospel which proclaims him and interprets his mission is certified. 

Troeltsch and Bousset recognize the right of science to go beyond 
the mere business of exact causal explanation and analysis to the 
formulation of comprehensive hypotheses. Just this right it is which 
demands that the study of Christianity shall be undertaken upon 
the common platform of a study of world religions by the methods 
which govern the science of Comparative Religions. No theory of 
religion or doctrine of validity will hold which is not based upon the 
view of the world established by science. 2 This is the way to the 
apologetic certainty of truth. Personal assurance comes, however, 
through the illuminating presence of great personalities and that 
natural religious mysticism which is enforced thereby. He who is 
confident of God in the prophetic measure becomes a medium of 
assurance to the common man. 

3. History. 

Conservative Orthodoxy does not tie up assurance of the good 
God with the normal unfoldment of history, but rather with super- 
natural interferences in the course of history, or with a history 

*Ut supra, p. 199. 

2 Troeltsch, Die wissenschaftliche Lage, p. 52 f. 

82 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 83 

which is the product of a combination of natural and supernatural 
elements, such as the merely natural could never have brought about. 
Ritschlianism will have nothing to do with the sort of supernat- 
ural activity which does not become articulate and human in the 
course of history. Religious mysticism is foreign to the genius of 
Christianity, and faith is forbidden to base thereon, but summoned 
to ground itself upon the sure historical Divine manifestation in 
Jesus. Ritschlianism shuns equally the path of pure science and the 
path of mysticism, if one for the moment disregard Kaftan's con- 
cessions to mysticism. It is felt that history keeps us close to experi- 
ence and at the same time saves us from mere subjectivism. Our 
assurance is thus the assurance of a community of individuals each 
of whom in his experience of moral defeat and schism has met with 
the historical Jesus, through the mediation of the community, and 
has been overwhelmed with the conviction that in him God was 
seeking communion with his needy spirit. 

Modern Positivism follows somewhat the same course with ref- 
erence to Jesus as a historical personage whose influence is medi- 
ated by the community; but it makes a place for communion with 
the risen Christ which Ritschlianism does not recognize; so that 
it does not hold sheerly to the historical Jesus, but through the 
medium of the historical Jesus achieves a super-historical Jesus, 
who is, after all, the real Jesus. 

While the Ritschlians hold firmly to the historical Jesus, this 
Jesus is for them, as for the Conservative Orthodox and the Mod- 
ern Positives, an Absolute inserted into the relative order of the 
world. He is God's final word for them all. 

With the School of Comparative Religions the very nature of 
scientific historical inquiry renders it impossible to tie religious faith 
up with historical detail. Even the Ritschlian attempt to preserve 
an effective portrait of Jesus is subject to grave perils. What we 
really have is the impulse which went out from Jesus and lives in 
the Christian community of our time; and, in addition, the Gospel 
portrait or portraits, many elements of which will always have an 
ideal value for us. It is the Jesus who is thus interpreted whom 
we really have ; and in the light of his religious genius we see light. 
But this does not hold for all time and every cycle of existence; 
rather, merely for us who are the heirs of a Christian tradition and 
members of the Christian community. 

83 



84 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

4. Revelation. 

In all but our fourth group, personal assurance is very intimately 
related to revelation. In Conservative Orthodoxy and Modern 
Positivism, revelation brings both a new experience and new truths, 
however the latter may be defined; in the Ritschlian view, revela- 
tion occasions a new moral experience. In all three, it is revelation 
and the ensuing experience which guarantee whatever religious 
truth may be disclosed. Personal assurance comes in each case 
through Jesus ; in Conservative Orthodoxy, through Jesus inter- 
preted very definitely as redeeming Son of God, who died for us 
and arose, and with whom we now have conscious communion; in 
Modern Positivism, interpreted in more mediating terms, but to the 
same intent; in Ritschlianism, interpreted as a man with a unique 
religious consciousness, particularly a consciousness of sinlessness 
and Lordship, about whose state beyond the grave we have no data 
in experience, but who awakens in us the consciousness that through 
him God is seeking us. 

While both Bousset and Troeltsch use the term revelation, they 
do not mean an activity of the Divine different in kind from that 
which inheres in all religious experience. If Jesus towers above us 
— and he does — it is as the supreme religious genius whom our own 
cycle of existence knows. He sheds upon our pathway just that 
light and imparts just that certainty which always arises from con- 
tact with superior religious personalities. He kindles a kindred 
faith in us ; but there is no justification for calling it supernatural 
certainty; it is the assurance of faith, gathered from an attitude 
toward that Reality in which all our highest values are grounded, 
an attitude which we see exhibited triumphantly in the career of 
such a supreme personality as Jesus. 

Such in outline is the bearing of the fundamental notions distin- 
guished upon the problem of religious assurance, as that problem 
is met — either expressly or by implication — by the systems under 
review. The concluding section of this essay attempts to indicate 
alternatives to which the tendencies disclosed point. 



84 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 85 



III. ALTERNATIVE VIEWS. 

The pendulum swings all the way from supreme distrust of the 
natural order, coupled with intimate dependence upon the arm of 
supernatural intervention, to a religious interpretation of the natural 
order and a unitary view of the world which renders the concept 
of the supernatural superfluous. Again, it swings all the way from 
dependence upon a series of absolutes over against the relative and 
conditioned in experience, to a calm acceptance of progressive change 
as the one order which rules whatever worlds and aspects of reality 
there be; so that there are no absolutes to depend upon, but only 
relatively greater magnitudes, who are together with us in the uni- 
versal flux; so that the religious man is driven back upon his suc- 
cessful use of the method of experimentation, the same method 
which obtains in the scientific realm, as basis of his confidence. That 
is, however, a very different thing from personal assurance of the 
forgiveness and favor of God — a fact which needs no further em- 
phasis. 

The movements which we have traced are all absolutistic, the 
Conservative Orthodox view maintaining a whole series of absolutes 
grounded in the one Absolute — 'God, while, on the other hand, such 
theologians as Troeltsch dispense with all absolutes intermediary 
between the individual and the infinite God. Nowhere has the idea 
of a God who is also himself a struggling and achieving being in a 
universe not wholly pliant to His will been dealt with. Since this 
view, in one form or another long familiar in the field of philosophy, 
has begun to arouse a certain speculative interest in the field of 
theology, it presents itself as a possible alternative basis for the 
grounding of religious life. Beyond this a world-view could not 
pass and continue theistic, though it might continue religious, in so 
far as religion is a social and personal phenomenon. Every theism, 
in whatever terms defined, is — if it preserve the idea of personality 
— a positive dualism. With the idea of a God for whom the universe 
is an adventure and its mastery a goal, it may become pluralism. 
But no system whose Deity is less than the Absolute and Infinite 
God can afford the individual evangelical assurance. 

85 



86 



THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 



A. The Supernaturalistic View of the World as Ground 

of Assurance. 

It will not be questioned that the view of the universe which the 
Bible, whether Old or New Testament, represents is a dualistic one, 
with a temporal, created, finite, natural order on the one hand, and 
an eternal, creative, infinite, supernatural order on the other; nor 
that God is conceived of as inhabiting the eternities characteris- 
tically, and as now and again, by the angel of His presence, by a 
theophany, by an incarnation, through the dream of seer or the 
inspiration of prophet, or through the presence of his Holy Spirit, 
making himself known in the temporal order. Nor will it be ques- 
tioned that this view of the universe obtained during the long period 
of creed and confession-making in the Christian church. It is 
equally certain that, with some adaptations, it is the characteristic 
view of the Conservative Orthodoxy of today. The modifications 
look in the direction of a doctrine of the Divine Immanence. But 
Conservative Orthodoxy has never accepted a thorough-going view 
of immanence ; for it conceives the characteristically Divine as 
somehow being brought into the natural order from without. God 
may dwell in nature and in humanity, but when he wants to make 
us sure of his presence, or to produce any momentous alteration 
in things, he must make the approach from without the natural 
order. 

It is equally true that this dualism of the natural and the super- 
natural has been from time immemorial coupled with a moral 
dualism; this lower realm is the abode of evil; the perfect, the 
ideal, the absolute good is in the supernatural realm, and can enter 
the natural only as something extraneous, something foreign, the 
capacity for whose reception even must be a donation from the 
other world. In such a view, the greatest need of the individual 
is to be forgiven for his sin, and to be assured of this. This is 
something other than the feeling of dependence and the cry for 
help; it is the feeling of guilt which many aspects of this general 
view tend to impress upon the individual. Unless adjustment can 
be effected, eternal ruin, loss and death will ensue. One must be a 
great stranger to both Bible and historic Christian thought not to 
grasp the reality and gravity of this situation. The power of all 
priesthoods has lain here, the significance of all penance, the mys- 
tery of all atonement. Let it be understood that God so loved the 

86 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 87 

world that he gave his Son to be crucified as the substitute for 
guilty humanity — and thus Conservative Orthodoxy understands the 
case — and it will be seen that no man can treat sin as a light matter. 
Besides being guilt, sin is hereditary and entails a racial vitiation, 
one that cannot be got rid of by anything its poor inheritor can do. 
Only God can forgive the guilty and cleanse the defiled, and memo- 
rable the hour when He does ! 

From his peculiar abode in the supernatural realm God grants 
forgiveness, and from thence as well he sends renewing grace into 
the sinful heart ; and by the experience of this grace, by the promises 
of his revealed Word, by the witness of his Holy Spirit, grants 
assurance of his forgiving and restoring favor. Protestantism has 
characteristically made the witness of the Word of God the chief 
basis of assurance of a gracious God; the promises of God, the 
whole history of redemption. 

Other systems than the Conservative Orthodox are rather vari- 
ously related to this general scheme. Modern Positivism makes the 
nearest approach to preserving it intact, its chief departure being in 
the direction of immanence — making all that happens "perfectly 
natural." At the same time, it has not done so to the extent of 
denying that the act of redemption is a divine donation, a rescue by 
a hand let down from above, or that in Christ the God-will that 
moves history toward a redemption goal entered into history. 
Ritschlianism refuses to discuss theories of the universe, but mani- 
festly has one — for the greater part, just the very general outlines 
of the one we have been discussing. That is, there is the same 
fundamental dualism of absolute and relative, infinite and finite, 
perfect Good and sinner; and God makes, once for all, in history, 
an absolute revelation, contact with which brings, as it alone can, 
assurance of the gracious God. The view which Troeltsch and 
Bousset, with some differences of detail, share is described as a 
fundamental religious dualism (Troeltsch's term). God is the Abso- 
lute Reason, a postulate of our finite reason. But both feel the 
pull of the unitary conception of science, and make no use of super- 
natural intervention. What God brings to pass he does by the use 
of that common method of his working which we call law. The 
only likeness to the Biblical world-view which this scheme mani- 
fests is that it has God the Absolute and unconditioned over against 
a world of the finite, relative and conditioned. It makes no use of 

87 



OO THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

theophany, incarnation, or the supernatural in general, though it 
allows for the quest of the soul after God, and a response through 
the ordained natural means. 

It seems evident that no mediating scheme will be able to bring 
about an improvement of the biblical view by its modification here 
and there. It is a self-consistent view, in its general outline ; the only 
question being whether one who is in any considerable degree 
either aware of or a sharer of the common scientific world-view of 
our time can also continue to hold the biblical as a religious view of 
the world. It may as well be recognized that the elements of that 
static, dualistic world-view belong together and are not to be bar- 
tered away piecemeal for a little evolution here and a bit of imma- 
nence there. For one who is able to live in that atmosphere of 
Biblicism, the plan for gaining personal assurance works perfectly 
well. In the same way the Ritschlian method works for him who is 
able to keep his thinking in two distinct compartments, his science in 
one, his religion in another. Anyone in vital touch with the repre- 
sentatives of either type knows that splendid Christian character 
has been attained by those who have whole-heartedly lived out its 
counsels. 

B. The Equivalent of Assurance in a View of the World- 
Process as Expression of Personal Will. 

This view still maintains the existence of the Infinite and Abso- 
lute God, unconditioned except by the method of his creative activity 
— an activity which brings his will to expression in the world- 
process, and which as a unitary conception needs no supplementa- 
tion by an extraordinary activity interrupting or setting aside that 
process. The personal will of the Highest is, in this view, known 
through the process, and not by means of something spectacular 
breaking into it from without. In this sense of the term, all our 
highest values become revelation. In this view, then, it is not exclu- 
sively the rational, but the ethical, the volitional, the aesthetic as 
well, which proclaim to us the reality and nature of God. 

In this view, however, there can manifestly be no such doctrine of 
evangelical assurance as in older view demands; a fudamental 
postulate of such evangelical assurance is belief in a dualistic, super- 
naturalistic universe. There is no such place for a doctrine of de- 
pravity with its correlated guilt, in this view, though it by no means 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 89 

excludes the concept of sin, and makes a great deal of the notions 
of limitation and insufficiency. 

The ethical demand is not defined chiefly by the sense of sin, as 
in the Conservative Orthodox view. In so far, however, as a sense 
of sin becomes a pronounced element in the moral consciousness 
of the individual, assurance of the favor of God will emerge with 
the ethical resolution, and in so far as a loftier or perfect ideal is 
demanded, a sense of God will suffuse that ideal. It must be recog- 
nized that this view allows for as real a conception of God and as 
genuine an attitude of faith in Him as the view which holds a static 
universe with "iron laws." In such a faith in the cosmic process 
as expressive of the will of the personal God, certainty will appear 
most clearly defined in connection with the moral and spiritual, the 
realms where our highest individual and social values lie; nor will 
it be confined to those experiences which stand out as associated 
with a crisis, but will be extended to those capable of being induced 
at will, or practically constant in experience. Personality, in this 
view, especially in its higher types and loftier manifestations, be- 
comes "revelatory." Thus Jesus may be found a surpassing center 
of spiritual illumination, lighting up the spiritual pathway, and in 
so far, revealing and assuring of a gracious God who makes pos- 
sible such a life in such a universe. 

This view of the matter demands of religion a friendly relation 
with science, not only for the reason that it is engaged in inter- 
pretation of the same reality which religion endeavors to read, but, 
and chiefly, because — since there is no revelation bringing us by 
supernatural means the content of the unexhausted remainders 
beyond present experience, and the unappreciated reality within 
present experience — the religious interpretation is directly condi- 
tioned by such a world-view as science justifies. 

Such a view will also demand a stronger rational grounding of 
the God-idea than would be the case if some sort of supernatural 
revelation were affirmed. At the same time, religion will not, in 
this view, be grounded directly upon reason, any more than in a 
supernaturalistic view. The effect of the rational upon the religious 
view will be mediated chiefly by the construction of a scientific 
world-view. There will still remain to religion the function of 
reading the higher value-side of existence, and of interpreting 
reality to us from this point of view. It is only to be remembered 



90 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

that religion will proceed to this task, under the present view, very 
much more closely related to reason and to science than if the super- 
natural mode of procedure were employed. 

The method of proceeding from the postulate of an infinite Per- 
sonal Will whose revelation lies in the world-process goes about 
its business of gaining a religious interpretation by a process of 
induction from the data of religious experience and the observation 
of the phenomena or religion, contemporary and historical ; holding 
to the concept of continuous progressive change, it believes that 
there is discoverable a teleology which discloses the religious mean- 
ing of the world. 

In general this is the view of the school of Comparative Religions. 
But the point of view as such is possible independently of such a 
relation to Kant as members of this school assume; indeed, it is 
bound up with no single theoretical construction of reality, but is 
possible from any point of view which combines an absolutistic 
postulate of reason or a personalistic postulate of religion with the 
application of the inductive method in interpreting the total world- 
process. The confidence which it permits is confidence in the world- 
process, through which the personal will of its postulate comes to 
expression for our experience; this confidence is both limited and 
reinforced by such a religious experience as this view engenders. 
It is a confidence that those things which the religious conscious- 
ness recognizes as our highest values are themselves expressions of 
the personal will of the Highest, and that we may build our lives 
upon them. 

C. Non-Absolutistic Confidence in the Method of 

EXPERI M ENT ATION . 

This view may be grounded in a pluralistic relativism, or it may 
refuse all generalizations in the realm of the met-empirical. Char- 
acteristically, it takes the latter point of view. It keeps in very 
close touch with science, at the same time being aware that this 
method which it proposes to employ in religion is just the method 
which modern science is employing in its reading of reality. Science 
no longer claims that its laws are more than working hypotheses; 
formulae and "laws" are a part of the scientific technique for a 
successful handling of certain aspects of reality. So, also, with 
the religious formulae; they are not held to be photographs of real- 

90 



RECENT PROTESTANT THEOLOGIES 91 

ity, they are related only to certain aspects of it. And with both 
science and religion, it is recognized, in this view, that the "law"- 
elaborating, "truth"-discovering activities of each are experimental 
procedures for the achievement of certain definite and specific ends. 
Thus, it is argued, all the recognized "results" of both science and 
religion have been achieved, as means to specific ends. This does 
not at all mean that they are to be erected into forms for the posi- 
tive government of all future investigation in these realms. Just 
as science feels not only at liberty, but obliged to overhaul the whole 
series of her postulates with every fresh undertaking, and actually 
does so with every new scientific generation, so religion, in this 
view, takes the same attitude toward the whole series of values 
which the past has hallowed. These will survive and be employed 
just so long as they contribute to the conceived needs of the genera- 
tion making use of them. 

The method of experimentation, by its very nature, must keep 
pushing out the fringe of reality ; by its very nature it must reread 
that portion of reality already supposed to have been adequately 
surveyed. But, whether as science or as religion, it goes about 
this matter not at all with a view to a compendium of universal 
knowledge, but rather to meet certain very definite and acute situ- 
ations. 

If, then, the hypothesis of a personal God yield certain very 
concrete values for the religious life, it will be made a working 
part of such a religious system ; when it ceases to yield such results, 
having been made an impossible postulate by virtue of the religious 
or scientific movement in some other directon, it will pass, and will 
be replaced — should that time ever come — by a real effective hy- 
pothesis. So, also, with the belief and practice of prayer. If it be 
found a sort of religious technique actually ministrant to religious 
need, it will be maintained; when it fails to yield such results, 
there is no inherent authority of the practice itself which can 
maintain it. 

The point of view recognizes religion as a practically universal 
factor of human life as we know it. It is a social fact, as well, 
and not a mere product of the individual religious consciousness. 
As a social phenomenon, independently of its origin or of any final 
interpretation, religion is to be viewed as an integral constituent of 
our common life. As such, it is recognized as a valid method of 

91 



92 THE BASIS OF ASSURANCE IN 

achieving recognized ends. It brings certain aesthetic and moral 
reinforcements to personal life which would otherwise be wanting. 
But no single type of religion can, on this hypothesis, be prescribed 
as of universal validity. At the same time, this point of view recog- 
nizes the intimate social and genetic development of all religious life, 
and holds that no generation can tear itself asunder from its past, 
living thus — so to speak — in vacuo. Ends will persist, felt wants 
will survive, like will beget like — though with a difference; and, as 
a result, each succeeding generation will take up and use much that 
the past generation has wrought out. 

The point of view thus represented is, in short, that since we get 
on in all other realms by the method of experimentation, we can 
do so, and must needs do so, in the field of religion as well ; for it 
holds that life is all of a piece, and that religion has to do with the 
value side of it. Since we do not have absolutes in science, and 
are, notwithstanding, able to order our world in such a way as to 
achieve a Twentieth Century civilization, may we not, it inquires, 
do a similar thing in the field of religion, with the value side of life, 
without any other than the experimental method, with no postu- 
late of the supernatural, and with no hypothesis of the Infinite and 
Absolute which can be ereted into a norm? 

It is not the object of this study to decide the basis of assurance 
or the ground of certainty. There are sincere advocates of each 
of the above-indicated points of view and it is quite manifest that 
what would satisfy one group as a logical demonstration would fall 
far short with another. At any rate, there can be no assurance that 
is not experimental ; if it be but a matter of theory and not of prac- 
tice with a working place in one's life, it can never serve as basis 
for the achievement of higher religious values. Faith arises and 
makes headway through the actual achievement of values. 



92 



LBAp'13 



Gbe Tftntversit? of Chicago 

FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER 



The Basis of Assurance in Recent 
Protestant Theologies 



A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate Divinity School in 
Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 

DEPARTMENT OF SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY 



By HENRY BURKE ROBINS 



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